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Most prior research and scholarship views cheating as an individual failing rather than a sociological or organizational phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to identify the challenges students face in graduate education and the factors that affect ethical beliefs towards academic dishonesty. This study used a mixed method research approach including an online survey with approximately 1,250 responses from graduate students representing each of UCF's colleges and fifteen interviews with students in fourteen different disciplines. Results of the online survey indicated no significant differences between international and domestic students. Survey and interview data indicate that graduate students' perceptions of the perceived norms and expectations related to academic honesty are impacted by the culture of the academic program. Analyzing these data through three sociological theories of deviance - anomie, labeling, and rational choice - shows that graduate students' understanding of appropriate academic behavior depends on their academic socialization. The data also reveal that graduate students struggle with subtleties of cheating, such as misrepresentation or "fudging" of data. Especially for the doctoral students in the sample, their views were highly influenced by viewing themselves as teachers and independent researchers. This sociological analysis emphasizes the role of culture in graduate programs and students' socialization into those cultures. This doctoral dissertation also provides a deeper understanding of the social and organizational factors affecting graduate students and re-frames students' perspectives on appropriate academic behavior.

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This dissertation consists of three essays in the fields of labor economics and education economics. The first chapter examines the effect of residential segregation on neighbor-based informal hiring. Existing works in the neighborhood effects literature have documented mixed evidence of community characteristics on employment and earnings. Yet most studies are silent on or unable to pinpoint the exact mechanisms that drive their results, making it hard to reconcile the conflicting findings. As a departure, in the first chapter, I start with a specific mechanism—job search via neighbor networks—and explore how segregation at the place of residence affects employment through this channel. In the remaining essays, I turn to the economics of education. The second chapter homes in on a specific unintended consequence of standardized testing: cheating between students on exams. While outright cheating is a common tactic to cope with grade pressure, it has received little attention from economists. My second chapter thus contributes to the sparse literature on how inordinate emphasis on exams can distort student behavior even to the test day. Finally, the third chapter revisits the popular belief that education necessarily improves cognitive skills. Insofar as one of the primary goals of school is to develop student intellect, are all years of schooling created equal? Along these lines, I question the value of the first year of high school to Chinese students in the context of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an educational initiative of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). To briefly recap, the first chapter studies how residential segregation by race and by education affects job search via neighbor networks. Using confidential data from the US Census Bureau, I measure segregation for each characteristic at both the individual level and the neighborhood level. Causality is achieved by interweaving a spatial framework with a mover-stayer design. The spatial component entails comparison between individuals across different hyperlocal neighborhoods (blocks) within the same reference area (block group). The focus of the comparison is existing residents on a block (stayers) with respect to newcomers (movers). Specifically, I ask: what is the likelihood that an incumbent resident—conditional on changing jobs—will join a firm that has employed a new neighbor on their block? How is this probability mediated by residential segregation? My answers to these questions are manifold. At the individual level, I find that future coworkership with new block neighbors is less likely among segregated stayers than among integrated stayers, irrespective of races and levels of schooling. The impacts are heterogeneous in magnitude, being most adverse for the most socioeconomically disadvantaged demographics: Blacks and those without a high school education. At the block level, however, higher segregation along either dimension raises the likelihood of “any” future coworkership with new block neighbors for all racial or educational “groups.” My hybrid identification strategy, capitalizing on data granularity, allows a causal interpretation of these results. Together, they point to the coexistence of homophily and in-group competition for job opportunities in linking residential segregation to neighbor-based informal hiring. My subtle findings have important implications for policy-making. The second chapter is an investigation of student cheating on high-stakes exams, a relatively understudied topic in the economics of education. The setting is Vietnam, the relevant assessment is the country’s national high school exit exams, and the (mis)behavior of interest is cheating between non-elite students and elite students who happen to sit in the same test room on test day. To quantify the pervasiveness of this misconduct, I exploit the quasi-random assignment of students from schools of varying quality into test rooms. Using micro-data from a large Vietnamese province, I find that the fraction of elite students in the same room has significantly positive effects on non-elite students’ scores when the tests are non-competitive (2007-2013). The effects are concentrated in the multiple-choice/quantitative subject tests and absent in the essay/qualitative subject tests. The average gains due to same-room elite density vary across subjects and can be as large as one point on a 0-10 grading scale. However, these effects disappear after an exam redesign in 2015 raises the stakes of the assessment (2018-2019). Similar patterns emerge when instead of quantity, the quality of the elite students in the same room is the main explanatory variable. Backed by institutional details, these findings provide credible evidence that discreet interpersonal cheating is present pre-reform, but vanishes as the reform reshuffles student incentives. The third and last chapter explores the implications for cognitive skills of increased absolute schooling at an important juncture in a student’s academic career: transition between junior high school (or middle school) and senior high school (or high school). In particular, I ask if the first year of senior secondary school (Grade 10) affects 15-year-old Chinese students’ performance on the PISA 2015. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, I find that on average, this additional year of schooling has no discernible effects on Science, Math, and Reading test scores. However, there is evidence that in the PISA 2015, Chinese tenth graders have fewer hours of in-school class time in these subjects and enjoy Science and peer cooperation less than comparable Chinese ninth graders. These observations add to the disappointment left by the lack of effects on test scores, even when they are insufficient to explain it away.

Mutualism is an understudied interaction in ecosystems throughout the world. Within the eastern United States, one fish-fish mutualism is the nest association between Nocomis and other cyprinids. I assessed the role of host parental care while testing for the selfish-herd effect. Additionally, I examined multiple nest associates in order to elucidate potential cheaters. I utilized gonadosomatic index (GSI) to compare reproductive condition among the bluehead chub Nocomis leptocephalus and its putative nest associates in Catawba Creek, Virginia. GSI of potentially obligate associates tracked host GSI more closely than weak associates, while weak associates spawned prior to Nocomis spawning. Given their GSI patterns and behavior, central stonerollers Campostoma anomalum may be cheaters in the interaction. I used multiple experiments to test for the selfish-herd effect, the role of parental care, and how relative risk influences reproductive decisions of associates. Most eggs were located in the bottom upstream quarter of nests, and a molecular analysis revealed that stonerollers and chubs constituted the majority of identified individuals. A comparison of host-associate ratios from four nest sections failed to identify the selfish herd effect. Another experiment found that host egg covering significantly reduced egg predation. Lastly, I assessed relative egg predation risk at four potential spawning locations; predation levels did not differ significantly at any location. While GSI patterns suggest that stonerollers may be cheaters, genetic evidence indicates that stonerollers spawn on Nocomis nests. Because GSI does not completely assess reproduction, secondary stoneroller reproduction on Nocomis nests may have been overlooked. / Master of Science

Academically dishonest behaviors pose a major threat to education. High rates of cheating have been reported at all levels of education, and by most accounts seem to be on the rise. Classroom environment research has demonstrated that environments created by classroom teachers have a significant impact on many aspects of education. Using a mixed methods approach, the current study investigated the relationship between cheating and the high school classroom environment. Quantitative data were collected from two surveys. The Academic Integrity Survey (AIS) asked students to self report cheating behaviors, and the Classroom Environment Scale (CES) asked students about their perceptions of the classroom environment. Qualitative data were collected from classroom observations and student interviews. The results of this study indicate that the classroom environment is significantly related to student cheating; the more positive the environment, the less students will cheat. Regression analyses indicated that 2 CES subscales, order and organization and involvement, were negatively related to student cheating and explained 40% and 23% of the variance respectively. The regression analyses also indicated that 3 other study variables, school sports participation, after school employment, and grade level were positively related to student cheating and explained 15%, 12%, and 11% of the variance, respectively. Qualitative analyses yielded 5 major findings. It was found that students cheat more in environments where students are not involved, that lack order and organization, and that lack teacher control. Students cheat more when their teachers are oblivious and are not respected, and larger systemic issues are related to student cheating behaviors. This study represents rare attempts to access the student perspective on cheating as well as to understand teachers’ role in student cheating. This study concludes that teachers can reduce the rates of cheating in their classes by improving their classroom environments, especially in the areas of order and organization and student involvement, and by increasing their use of authentic standards based assessments. However, most of these improvements will only impact students’ opportunity to cheat. Educators will have a difficult time affecting students’ desire to cheat until larger systemic problems with the current educational system are addressed.

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