The relationship between higher education faculty’s motivation to report suspected academic dishonesty and likelihood to report

Although academic dishonesty is a problem throughout higher education institutions, faculty underreport academic misconduct for a variety of reasons. This study investigated the relationship between motivational factors and likelihood to report academic dishonesty amongst higher education faculty. It filled the gap in the literature on what would motivate faculty to report suspected academic dishonesty. Social cognitive theory served as the primary theoretical framework, supported by structural functional theory, while fraud triangle theory was used for survey instrument operationalization. A cross-sectional survey was administered to faculty at a private, non-profit higher education institution (n = 351). Kendall’s Tau b correlation was used to analyze the relationships between 15 motivators and faculty’s likelihood to report. Two motivational factors were found to be positively statistically significant: availability of confrontation guidelines and knowing students will be held accountable. The ordinal logistic regression results showed that seven of the 15 motivational factors positively influenced faculty’s role execution. Influential motivators were: clearer procedures in place for handling cases of academic dishonesty, knowing students will receive constructive intervention measures, clearer academic dishonesty policy, more administrative time to handle academic dishonesty, knowing my institution supports my judgment, increased pay, and access to/better employment benefits. The findings provided evidence for ways to mitigate faculty’s underreporting of academic integrity. Faculty will benefit from this study’s findings, which show the factors impacting their reporting of suspected academic misconduct currently and in the future. The results suggest ways to improve faculty’s workplace psychological safety, enhance faculty–student and faculty–institution relationships, and clarify faculty’s performance expectations.