CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 227

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 5 of the 5 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

How Common Is Commercial Contract Cheating in Higher Education and Is It Increasing? A Systematic Review

Newton, Philip M.·2018·Frontiers in Education
DOI 10.3389/feduc.2018.00067
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Overview

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3389/feduc.2018.00067

Cites

5 of 5 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Figures

FIGURE 1 Self-reports of commercial contract cheating have increased over time. (A) The plots show the percentage of respondents, in individual samples, who answered 'yes' to having paid a third party to undertake assignments for them, ± 95%CI. (B) The percentage of participants answering yes to engaging in the most commonly reported form of misconduct in the sample. These have also increased over time, ± 95%CI.
FIGURE 1 Self-reports of commercial contract cheating have increased over time. (A) The plots show the percentage of respondents, in individual samples, who answered 'yes' to having paid a third party to undertake assignments for them, ± 95%CI. (B) The percentage of participants answering yes to engaging in the most commonly reported form of misconduct in the sample. These have also increased over time, ± 95%CI.CC-BY · From the PDF
FIGURE 2 Summary of key quality metrics; were participants guaranteed anonymity, did the study report ethical approval, and was the survey instrument piloted before use. The percentage of samples meeting each criterion is shown in red (Y), while those which did not are shown in blue (N). For the piloting analysis, those samples which piloted the instrument before use and used a previously published instrument are dark red (PY), while those using an established instrument without piloting are pale blue (PN).
FIGURE 2 Summary of key quality metrics; were participants guaranteed anonymity, did the study report ethical approval, and was the survey instrument piloted before use. The percentage of samples meeting each criterion is shown in red (Y), while those which did not are shown in blue (N). For the piloting analysis, those samples which piloted the instrument before use and used a previously published instrument are dark red (PY), while those using an established instrument without piloting are pale blue (PN).CC-BY · From the PDF

Verification

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Citations

Cites

Show all 5 references

Research works printed but not linked: 102

  1. Ahmadi, 2014, Plagiarism in the Academic Context: a study of Iranian EFL Learners, Res. Ethics, 10, 151, 10.1177/1747016113488859 · DOI
  2. Athanasou, 2002, Male and female differences in self-report cheating, Pract. Assess. Res. Eval., 8
  3. Babalola, 2012, Awareness and Incidence of Plagiarism among Undergraduates in a Nigerian Private University, Afr. J. Lib. Arch. Inform. Sci., 22, 53
  4. Baetz, 2011, Encouraging active classroom discussion of academic integrity and misconduct in higher education business contexts, J. Acad. Ethics, 9, 217, 10.1007/s10805-011-9141-4 · DOI
  5. Balbuena, 2015, Prevalence, Motives, and Views of
  6. Bartlett, 2009, Cheating goes global as essay mills multiply, Chron. High. Educ., 55
  7. Bichler-Robertson, 2003, Low self-control, opportunity, and strain in students' reported cheating behaviour, J. Crime Just., 26, 23, 10.1080/0735648X.2003.9721169 · DOI
  8. Bishop, 2009, Academic Dishonesty and the Use of Online Media Among Education Graduate Students
  9. Bisping, 2008, Modeling Academic Dishonesty: the role of student perceptions and misconduct type, J. Econ. Educ., 39, 4, 10.3200/JECE.39.1.4-21 · DOI
  10. Bretag, 2018, Contract cheating: a survey of Australian University Students, Stud. High. Educ., 1, 10.1080/03075079.2018.1462788 · DOI · Paper page
  11. Brimble, 2005, Perceptions of the prevalence and seriousness of academic dishonesty in Australian Universities, Aus. Educ. Res., 32, 19, 10.1007/BF03216825 · DOI
  12. Butt, 2016, The role of high quality surveys in political science research, 262, 10.4337/9781784710828.00027 · DOI
  13. Carpenter, 2006, Engineering students' perceptions of and attitudes towards cheating, J. Eng. Educ., 95, 181, 10.1002/j.2168-9830.2006.tb00891.x · DOI
  14. Christensen-Hughes, 2006, Academic misconduct within higher education in Canada, Can. J. High. Educ. Toronto, 36, 1, 10.47678/cjhe.v36i2.183537 · DOI
  15. Clarke, 2007, Establishing a systematic six-stage process for detecting contract cheating, 342, 10.1109/ICPCA.2007.4365466 · DOI
  16. Clarke, 2013, Commercial aspects of contract cheating, 219, 10.1145/2462476.2462497 · DOI
  17. Curtin, 2000, The effects of response rate changes on the index of consumer sentiment, Public Opin. Q., 64, 413, 10.1086/318638 · DOI
  18. Curtis, 2017, How prevalent is contract cheating and to what extent are students repeat offenders?, J. Acad. Ethics, 2, 115, 10.1007/s10805-017-9278-x · DOI
  19. Curtis, 2013, Online Academic-Integrity Mastery Training May Improve Students' Awareness of, and Attitudes Toward, Plagiarism, Psychol. Learn. Teach., 12, 282, 10.2304/plat.2013.12.3.282 · DOI · Paper page
  20. Curtis, 2011, An examination of factors related to plagiarism and a five-year follow-up of plagiarism at an Australian University, Int. J. Educ. Integr., 7, 10.21913/IJEI.v7i1.742 · DOI
  21. Curtis, 2016, Is plagiarism changing over time? A 10-year time-lag study with three points of measurement, Higher Educ. Res. Dev., 35, 1167, 10.1080/07294360.2016.1161602 · DOI
  22. Dayton, 1997, Latent class analysis of survey data dealing with academic dishonesty, Applications of Latent Trait and Latent Class Models in the Social Sciences, 172
  23. Dickerson, 2007, Facilitated plagiarism: the saga of term-paper mills and the failure of legislation and litigation to control them, Villan. Law Rev., 52, 21
  24. Draper, 2017, Are essay mills committing fraud? an analysis of their behaviours vs the 2006 Fraud Act (UK), Int. J. Educ. Integr., 13, 3, 10.1007/s40979-017-0014-5 · DOI
  25. Draper, 2017, A legal approach to tackling contract cheating?, Int. J. Educ. Integr., 13, 11, 10.1007/s40979-017-0022-5 · DOI
  26. Ellis, 2018, The infernal business of contract cheating: understanding the business processes and models of academic custom writing sites, Int. J. Educ. Integr., 14, 1, 10.1007/s40979-017-0024-3 · DOI
  27. Eret, 2014, Internet plagiarism in higher education: tendencies, triggering factors and reasons among teacher candidates, Assess. Eval. High. Educ., 39, 1002, 10.1080/02602938.2014.880776 · DOI
  28. Erickson, 1974, On the relationship between self-reported and actual deviance: an empirical test, Humboldt J. Soc. Relat., 1, 106
  29. Eve, 1981, Scholastic dishonesty among college undergraduates parallel tests of two sociological explanations, Youth Soc., 13, 3, 10.1177/0044118X8101300101 · DOI
  30. Franklyn-Stokes, 1995, Undergraduate cheating: who does what and why?, Stud. High. Educ., 20, 159, 10.1080/03075079512331381673 · DOI
  31. Gardner, 1988, Analysis of cheating on academic assignments, Psychol. Record, 38, 543, 10.1007/BF03395046 · DOI
  32. Gaskill, 2014, Cheating in Business Online Learning: Exploring Students Motivation, Current Practices and Possible Solutions
  33. Genereux, 1995, Circumstances surrounding cheating: a questionnaire study of college students, Res. High. Educ., 36, 687, 10.1007/BF02208251 · DOI
  34. Gorard, 2004, Is there a shortage of quantitative work in education research?, Oxford Rev. Educ., 30, 371, 10.1080/0305498042000260494 · DOI
  35. Goyder, 2002, Evaluating Socio-Economic Status (SES) bias in survey nonresponse, J. Offic. Statist., 18, 1
  36. Halbesleben, 2013, Evaluating survey quality in health services research: a decision framework for assessing nonresponse bias, Health Serv. Res., 48, 913, 10.1111/1475-6773.12002 · DOI
  37. Hard, 2006, Faculty and college student beliefs about the frequency of student academic misconduct, J. High. Educ., 77, 1058, 10.1080/00221546.2006.11778956 · DOI
  38. Harper, 2018, Contract cheating: a Survey of Australian University Staff, Stud. High. Educ., 1, 10.1080/03075079.2018.1462789 · DOI
  39. Hart, 2010, Academic integrity in an online registered nurse to baccalaureate in nursing program, J. Cont. Educ. Nurs., 41, 489, 10.3928/00220124-20100701-03 · DOI
  40. Haunberger, 2011, To participate or not to participate: decision processes related to survey non-response, Bull. Sociol. Methodol., 109, 39, 10.1177/0759106310387721 · DOI
  41. Hensley, 2013, Relation of gender, course enrollment, and grades to distinct forms of academic dishonesty, Teach. High. Educ., 18, 895, 10.1080/13562517.2013.827641 · DOI
  42. Hilbert, 1985, Involvement of nursing students in unethical classroom and clinical behaviors, J. Profess. Nurs., 1, 230, 10.1016/S8755-7223(85)80160-5 · DOI
  43. Hilbert, 1987, Academic fraud: prevalence, practices, and reasons, J. Profess. Nurs., 3, 39, 10.1016/S8755-7223(87)80026-1 · DOI
  44. Hilbert, 1988, Moral development and unethical behavior among nursing students, J. Profess. Nurs., 4, 163, 10.1016/S8755-7223(88)80133-9 · DOI
  45. Hosny, 2014, Attitude of students towards cheating and plagiarism: University Case Study, J. Appl. Sci., 14, 748, 10.3923/jas.2014.748.757 · DOI
  46. Hunt, 2017, Students' Use of Contract Cheaters Who Auction off Homework to Dark Web Ghostwriters Rising, Professor Warns | CBC News
  47. Jamali, 2015, Open access and sources of full-text articles in google scholar in different subject fields, Scientometrics, 105, 1635, 10.1007/s11192-015-1642-2 · DOI
  48. Jones, 2008, Academic Work, the Internet and U.S. College Students, Internet High. Educ., 11, 165, 10.1016/j.iheduc.2008.07.001 · DOI
  49. Junger-Tas, 1999, The self-report methodology in crime research, Crime Just., 25, 291, 10.1086/449291 · DOI
  50. Juni, 2006, Academic cheating as a function of defense mechanisms and object relations, Psychol. Reports, 98, 627, 10.2466/pr0.98.3.627-639 · DOI
  51. Kayaoglu, 2016, Examining students' perceptions of plagiarism: a cross-cultural study at tertiary level, J. Further High. Educ., 40, 682, 10.1080/0309877X.2015.1014320 · DOI · Paper page
  52. Kidwell, 2008, Integrity at a distance: a study of academic misconduct among university students on and off campus, Account. Educ., 17, S3, 10.1080/09639280802044568 · DOI
  53. Lambert, 2006, Chalkface challenges: a study of academic dishonesty amongst students in New Zealand Tertiary Institutions, Assess. Eval. High. Educ., 31, 485, 10.1080/02602930600679415 · DOI
  54. Lancaster, 2016, Contract cheating: the outsourcing of assessed student work, 639, 10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_17 · DOI
  55. Ledesma, 2011, Academic dishonesty among undergraduate students in a Korean University, Res. World Econ., 2, 25, 10.5430/rwe.v2n2p25 · DOI
  56. Liberati, 2009, The PRISMA statement for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses of studies that evaluate health care interventions: explanation and elaboration, PLoS Med., 6, e1000100, 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000100 · DOI · Paper page
  57. Liebler, 2016, Collecting and reporting self-reports of the number of times cheated, College Student J., 50, 95
  58. Lim, 2001, Attitudes toward, and intentions to report, academic cheating among students in Singapore, Ethics Behav., 11, 261, 10.1207/S15327019EB1103_5 · DOI
  59. Mahmood, 2009, Contract cheating: a new phenomenon in cyber-plagiarism, Commun. IBIMA, 10, 93
  60. Mattei, 2009, Measuring the Effectiveness of a Required Ethics Class in an Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum
  61. Maxwell, 2008, Does culture influence understanding and perceived seriousness of plagiarism?, Int. J. Educ. Integr, 4, 10.21913/IJEI.v4i2.412 · DOI
  62. McCabe, 2016, Cheating and honor: lessons from a long-term research project, 187, 10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_35 · DOI
  63. Megehee, 2008, The impact of perceived peer behavior, probable detection and punishment severity on student cheating behavior, Market. Educ. Rev., 18, 5, 10.1080/10528008.2008.11489033 · DOI
  64. Mulisa, 2015, The prevalence of academic dishonesty and perceptions of students towards its practical habits: implication for quality of education, Sci. Technol. Arts Res. J., 4, 309, 10.4314/star.v4i2.43 · DOI
  65. Newstead, 1996, Individual differences in student cheating, J. Educ. Psychol., 88, 229, 10.1037/0022-0663.88.2.229 · DOI
  66. Newton, 2015, Academic integrity: a quantitative study of confidence and understanding in students at the start of their higher education, Assess. Eval. High. Educ., 41, 482, 10.1080/02602938.2015.1024199 · DOI
  67. Newton, 2016, Custom essay writers, freelancers, and other paid third parties, 249, 10.1007/978-981-287-098-8_38 · DOI
  68. Nonis, 1998, Deterring cheating behavior in the marketing classroom: an analysis of the effects of demographics, attitudes, and in-class deterrent strategies, J. Market. Educ., 20, 188, 10.1177/027347539802000302 · DOI
  69. O'Malley, 2012, Plagiarism on the rise? combating contract cheating in science courses, Int. J. Innov. Sci. Math. Educ., 20, 16
  70. O'Neill, 2012, The impact of honour codes and perceptions of cheating on academic cheating behaviours, especially for MBA bound undergraduates, Account. Educ., 21, 231, 10.1080/09639284.2011.590012 · DOI
  71. Owings, 2014, The essay industry, Mount. Plains J. Bus. Econ. Gen. Res., 15
  72. Park, 2013, Academic cheating among nursing students, Nurse Educ. Tod., 33, 346, 10.1016/j.nedt.2012.12.015 · DOI · Paper page
  73. Pupovac, 2015, Scientists admitting to plagiarism: a meta-analysis of surveys, Sci. Eng. Ethics, 21, 1331, 10.1007/s11948-014-9600-6 · DOI
  74. 2017, Contracting to Cheat in Higher Education - How to Address Contract Cheating, the Use of Third-Party Services and Essay Mills
  75. Quintos, 2017, A study on the prevalence and correlates of academic dishonesty in four undergrdauate degree programmes, Asia Pacific J. Multidiscip. Res., 5, 135
  76. Ransome, 2017, Are we educating educators about academic integrity? A study of UK higher education textbooks, Assess. Eval. High. Educ., 43, 126, 10.1080/02602938.2017.1300636 · DOI
  77. Rigby, 2015, Contract cheating & the market in essays, J. Econ. Behav. Organ., 111, 23, 10.1016/j.jebo.2014.12.019 · DOI
  78. Rowland, 2017, “Just Turn to Us”: the persuasive features of contract cheating websites, Assess. Eval. High. Educ., 1, 10.1080/02602938.2017.1391948 · DOI
  79. Rowland, 2018, ‘Just turn to us’: the persuasive features of contract cheating websites, Assess. Eval. Higher Educ, 43, 652, 10.1080/02602938.2017.1391948 · DOI
  80. Rumbough, 2001, Controversial Uses of the Internet by College Students
  81. Scanlon, 2002, Internet plagiarism among college students, J. Coll. Stud. Develop., 43, 374
  82. Scheers, 1987, Improved estimation of academic cheating behavior using the randomized response technique, Res. High. Educ., 26, 61, 10.1007/BF00991933 · DOI
  83. Selwyn, 2008, “Not Necessarily a Bad Thing …”: a study of online plagiarism amongst undergraduate students, Assess. Eval. High. Educ., 33, 465, 10.1080/02602930701563104 · DOI
  84. Sendag, 2012, Surveying the extent of involvement in online academic dishonesty (e-Dishonesty) related practices among university students and the rationale students provide: one university's experience, Comput. Hum. Behav., 28, 849, 10.1016/j.chb.2011.12.004 · DOI
  85. Sheard, 2002, Cheating and plagiarism: perceptions and practices of first year IT students, 183, 10.1145/544414.544468 · DOI
  86. Smith, 2013, Deviant reactions to the college pressure cooker: a test of general strain theory on undergraduate students in the United States, Int. J. Crim. Just. Sci., 8, 88
  87. Spaulding, 2009, Perceptions of Academic Honesty in Online vs. Face-to-Face Classrooms, J. Interact. Online Learn., 8, 183
  88. Stella-Maris, 2017, Exploring students' perception and experience of ghostwriting and contract cheating in Nigeria higher education institutions, World J. Educ. Res., 4, 551, 10.22158/wjer.v4n4p551 · DOI
  89. Stephens, 2007, Does moral judgment go offline when students are online? A comparative analysis of undergraduates' beliefs and behaviors related to conventional and digital cheating, Ethics Behav., 17, 233, 10.1080/10508420701519197 · DOI
  90. Stogner, 2013, Learning to E-Cheat: a criminological test of internet facilitated academic cheating, J. Crim. Just. Educ., 24, 175, 10.1080/10511253.2012.693516 · DOI
  91. Sullivan, 2017, Surveys: longitudinal, cross-sectional and trend studies, 395, 10.4135/9781473983953.n20 · DOI
  92. 2017, Good Practice Note: Addressing Contract Cheating to Safeguard Academic Integrity | Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency
  93. Turner, 2017, University Lecturers Are Topping up Earnings by Helping Students Cheat, Review Suggests
  94. Usborne, 2017, Essays for Sale: The Booming Online Industry in Writing
  95. Wajda-Johnston, 2001, Academic dishonesty at the graduate level, Ethics Behav., 11, 287, 10.1207/S15327019EB1103_7 · DOI
  96. Walker, 2012, Contract cheating: a new challenge for academic honesty?, J. Acad. Ethics, 10, 27, 10.1007/s10805-012-9150-y · DOI
  97. Wallace, 2014, Turnaround time and market capacity in contract cheating, Educ. Stud., 40, 233, 10.1080/03055698.2014.889597 · DOI
  98. Walton, 2010, An Investigation of
  99. Wellman, 2012, Investigating academic malpractice within an MBA marketing module, Int. J. Educ. Integr., 8, 10.21913/IJEI.v8i1.783 · DOI
  100. Williams, 2012, Cheating Incidences, Perceptions of Cheating, and the Moral Development Level of College Students
  101. Yang, 2012, Attitudes and behaviors related to academic dishonesty: a survey of Taiwanese Graduate students, Ethics Behav., 22, 218, 10.1080/10508422.2012.672904 · DOI
  102. Zafarghandi, 2012, An Investigation of Iranian EFL masters students' perceptions of plagiarism, Int. J. Educ. Integr., 8, 10.21913/IJEI.v8i2.811 · DOI

Cited by

Sorted by citations

See all 227

Metadata

Authors
Newton, P. M.
Venue
Frontiers in Education
Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
Published
2018-08-30
Volume
3
ISSN
2504-284X
DOI
10.3389/feduc.2018.00067
Cited by
227
References
5
Licence
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (unspecified)

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review

How to cite

Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.

This page
CoChat. (2026). Citation check: How Common Is Commercial Contract Cheating in Higher Education and Is It Increasing? A Systematic Review. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.3389/feduc.2018.00067
The paper
Newton, P. M. (2018). How Common Is Commercial Contract Cheating in Higher Education and Is It Increasing? A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Education. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2018.00067