Thesis (M. S.)--Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Smith, Anderson; Committee Member: Hertzog, Christopher; Committee Member: Rogers, Wendy.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 261-272).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Biological Sciences Department, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Dennis L. Weisman / This first essay empirically tests the Peltzman Effect utilizing a unique dataset that is used to investigate the behavior of Formula One race car drivers. The race-level dataset was culled from various sources and includes detailed information from a total of 547 Formula One races. A fixed effects model is used to determine whether or not Formula One race car drivers alter their behavior in response to changes in the conditional probability of a casualty given an accident. The empirical estimates support economic theory; Formula One race car drivers become more reckless as their cars become safer, ceteris paribus. Furthermore, the behavioral response of drivers is larger when the analysis is confined to changes in the conditional probability of a fatality given an accident. The second essay utilizes data from the National Youth Survey to reevaluate key conclusions from Fair (1978). This study supports some of Fair's empirical findings; however, the estimates obtained from this research contradict Fair in several key ways. For example, this paper finds that the coefficients of occupation and education are both statistically significant but the signs are opposite to those in Fair (1978). An even more noteworthy contradiction is the negative relationship between years of marriage and infidelity; this suggests that marriage longevity is positively related to that of match quality of the relationship. Also included in these new specifications are independent variables that better control for individual heterogeneity, factors such as general health, race, and alcohol consumption. This essay presents a simple model to characterize the outcome of a land dispute between two rival parties using a Stackelberg game. This study assumes that opposing parties have access to different technologies for challenging and defending in conflict. Conditions are derived under which territorial conflict between the two parties is less likely to persist indefinitely. Allowing for an exogenous destruction term as in Garfinkel and Skaperdas (2000), it is shown that, when the nature of conflict becomes more destructive, the likelihood of a peaceful outcome, in which the territory's initial possessor deters the challenging party, increases if the initial possessor holds more intrinsic value for the disputed land.

No description available.

Academic integrity is an important part of higher education. This is especially true in nursing education programs. Nurses must be able to think critically, have sound clinical judgement, and make autonomous decisions. If there are concerns of academic integrity violations during nursing programs, these skills become questionable when the student enters the nursing profession. Nursing students believe that the severity of academic integrity violations occur along a continuum, which impacts their acceptance of these violations. Severity may also impact a student’s willingness to report a peer for a violation of academic integrity. This cross-sectional, correlational study assessed baccalaureate nursing students’ perceptions on various aspects of academic integrity violations using McCabe’s Academic Integrity Survey-Modified for Nursing Students (MAIS-MNS) and a knowledge assessment. Correlations, t tests, and regression analysis were used to identify relationships among variables and potential predictive factors between classroom and clinical violations, willingness to report peers, and perceived program supports. This study also considered the theory of neutralization as a factor in student acceptance of academic integrity violations. Results suggest that the perceived severity of cheating in the classroom can predict the perceived perception of severity in the clinical setting. Results also showed that students who neutralize their actions, do not perceive those actions as severe. Finally, the perception of severity does predict a student’s willingness to report peer violations of academic integrity. Creating a culture of academic integrity has the potential to reduce academic integrity violations. Creating this culture, partially through education on academic integrity and violations of academic integrity, is needed to enhance nursing education programs and ensure the continued excellence expected of nurses.

Academic dishonesty and cheating abound in universities across the globe, with increased instances of academic dishonesty in many disciplines including medical professional education programs that have high expectations for integrity and ethical conduct. The purpose of this study was to determine how faculty in physician assistant (PA) programs described their experiences, specifically their roles and responsibilities, in addressing incidents of academic dishonesty. The conceptual framework by Nitsch and colleagues, which focused on faculty failure to report conduct violations in dishonesty cases, informed interviews with 10 PA faculty members concerning the role of faculty members in academic dishonesty violations. Interview transcripts were analyzed to identify common themes through a manual coding process. Interviews were followed by a modified Delphi process with 5 of the participants to confirm consensus of the responses obtained in the interviews. Themes from the findings focused on faculty members' high expectations of academic honesty from students in PA programs, the role of university involvement in reporting and managing cases of academic dishonesty, including deterrents to faculty reporting, and program strategies to deter academic dishonesty. Based on findings, a PA faculty development workshop was developed for creating cultures of academic integrity in PA programs and program campuses. Positive social change may result through better management of cases of academic dishonesty in PA programs and on campus, as well as the use of faculty as change agents in promoting a culture of campus integrity.

Thesis studying instances of cheating in junior high school. According to the introduction, the purpose of the study is: 1. To determine the extent to which pupils in the junior high school grades will cheat when allowed to score their own examination papers. 2. To determine the relation between the professed attitude toward cheating on examinations and actual cheating behavior. 3. To determine some factors related to cheating (p. 1).

Plagiarism in programming assignments has been a problem for a long time, and while the schools try to stop it, it is an ever ongoing game of cat and mouse between students and the schools. When students find new ways to hide their plagiarism, others develop new tools to find it again. This thesis looks specifically at plagiarism in entry level coding assignments, where the code is usually much simpler, and if it is possible to use the structure of the program code to detect plagiarism. The structural properties chosen is the abstract syntax tree for the code along with the codes call graph. The syntax tree contains the programs general structure and the call graphs are used in an attempt to find plagiarism where plagiarized code has been split up in smaller parts. For comparison a well established algorithm called MOSS is used. The results shows that the abstract syntax tree and call graph can be used to identify plagiarism, but it seems it is not worth the additional effort needed to use algorithms based on program structure, as it seems the plagiarism done for these assignments is quite simplistic. Additional research should instead be done to find out more on how students actually cheat in these entry level assignments and develop methods to counter those specifically. / Plagiering i programmeringsuppgifter i skolan har varit ett problem under lång tid. Skolorna försöker stoppa det men det är en ständigt pågående katt och råtta-lek mellan skolorna och eleverna. När studenterna hittar nya sätt att dölja plagiat så skapar någon annan nya metoder för att upptäcka det. Den här rapporten kommer att fokusera specifikt på plagiering i instegsuppgifter för programmering, där programmen oftast är mycket enklare och om det är möjligt att använda programstrukturen i dessa för att upptäcka plagiat. De strukturella egenskaper som används är programmens abstrakta syntaxträd och anropsgrafer. Syntaxträdet innehåller programmets generella struktur och anropsgraferna används för att försöka hitta plagiat där den plagierade programkoden har delats upp i mindre delar. Som jämförelsealgoritm används en väletablerad algoritm som kallas MOSS. Resultaten visar att det är möjligt att använda det abstrakta syntaxträdet och anropsgrafen för att upptäcka plagiering, men det verkar inte vara värt det extra arbete som krävs för att implementera algoritmer baserade på strukturella egenskaper. Detta då de plagiat som gjorts för dessa uppgifter är simpla. Mer forskning bör istället fokusera på exakt hur studenter fuskar i dessa uppgifter och utveckla metoder för att specifikt upptäcka dessa.