Este estudo analisa os efeitos colaterais indesejados de avaliações externas quando combinadas a políticas de responsabilização (accountability) escolar no Brasil. Estes efeitos colaterais, denominados \"peiragênicos\" por Madaus e Russell, são previsíveis, indesejados e decorrem da manipulação (gaming) das regras do sistema pelos agentes envolvidos, levando à inflação de escores, vieses nos resultados reportados e interferências indevidas nos processos escolares que se pretendiam monitorar. Este estudo completa uma lacuna na literatura nacional, visando a medir a extensão de dois destes efeitos: a exclusão não aleatória de alunos de baixa proficiência de avaliações e a incidência de fraudes ingênuas, em desacordo aos protocolos de aplicação das avaliações. Duas abordagens são apresentadas. Para estimar as exclusões de alunos de baixa proficiência é proposta uma análise baseada na assimetria de distribuições de proficiência, usando distribuições normais truncadas. Para avaliar a extensão de fraudes ingênuas, definidas como a divulgação de respostas aos alunos testados sem levar em conta a existência de cadernos de itens ou permissividade com \"colas\" entre alunos, é introduzida uma abordagem baseada na contagem de blocos impróprios maximizadores. Ambos os algoritmos são aplicados à Prova Brasil, de 2013 e 2015. As medições obtidas são confrontadas com variáveis explicativas associadas às pressões da responsabilização, mediante modelos hierárquicos lineares. As pressões consideradas neste trabalho resultam de programas estaduais de bonificação docente e de acompanhamento do Indicador de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica (Ideb), assim como variações em rankings do Ideb nos municípios. Os resultados indicam que tanto a exclusão de alunos de baixo desempenho quanto fraudes ingênuas ocorrem em associação a estas pressões. O gaming parece mais intenso em unidades da federação com políticas high-stakes, assim como em escolas com Ideb baixo verificado na avaliação anterior. Tendências de variação do Ideb, distâncias deste indicador às metas, ou mudanças em posições no ranking resultam não correlacionados significativamente às pressões. Exclusões medidas são menores em UFs com avaliações próprias para cálculo de bonificação. Um substancial aumento nas indicações de fraudes em 2015, versus 2013, pode estar associado às mudanças na participação mínima de alunos exigida nestas avaliações. Conclui-se que há necessidade dos formuladores de avaliações tomarem cuidados para controlar os dois efeitos estudados. / This survey analyzes the undesired side effects of standardized assessments when combined with accountability policies, in public schools in Brazil. These effects, identified as \"peiragenics\" by Madaus and Russell, are predictable, undesired and unplanned for, and arise from agents engaging in \"gaming the system\", leading to score inflation, biased reported results and undue interference in the schooling processes under assessment. This survey attempts to fill a void in Brazilian literature regarding the measurement of two side effects: exclusion of low performing students from assessments and undue interference of teachers or testers in the assessment protocols (cheating). To this effect, two analytic approaches are presented. To estimate non-random exclusions of low performing students from testing, a model based on the observed asymmetry of proficiency results, using truncated normal distributions, is proposed. A second model, to assess the extension of naive teacher cheating, defined as attempts to share common answers regardless of differences in test booklets or turning a blind eye to students\' copying answers from classmates, counts unexpected appearances of improper score-maximizing blocks, introduced in this study. Both algorithms are applied to Prova Brasil\'s 2013 and 2015 data sets, a federal assessment of mathematics and reading skills. Measurements are confronted with explanatory variables to test for accountability pressures and gaming-inducing drivers, using two-level hierarchical linear models. The pressures considered in this survey arise from teacher bonus programs adopted by several Brazilian states, performance tracking and rankings of the Ideb indicator (a nationwide metric of the development of elementary and middle-school public education). Results indicate that both selective exclusions of low performing students and naive teacher cheating occur, in patterns associated with pressures. Gaming behavior appears to be more intense in states with high-stakes linked to the assessment, in schools with lower Ideb ratings. Past trends and gaps versus targets in Ideb and changes in local rankings result not significantly correlated with gaming behavior. Lowest exclusion measurements occur in states where alternative assessments are used for bonus payments. A substantial increase in cheating indications in 2015 over 2013 was measured, possibly reflecting increased minimum participation requirements stressing schools to maintain performance through cheating attempts. In conclusion, the need for care in design of assessment policies to control for the two effects measured is made evident.

No presente trabalho, é testada e avaliada a aplicação de Redes Neurais Artificiais no combate de trapaças (cheating, em inglês) do tipo speed cheating em jogos online massivos de múltiplos jogadores, também conhecidos como MMOG (Massively Multi- player Online Games). Os MMOG representam um modelo de negócio onde quantias significativas de recursos financeiros estão envolvidas, e crescem a cada dia. Os mode- los para o combate de trapaças, que possam afastar jogadores de jogos ou servidores, estão localizados na camada de rede, à nível de protocolo. Analisando o estado-da-arte, constatou-se que não existem trabalhos explorando a área de Inteligência Artificial para este fim, tornando-se assim relevante o estudo de sua aplicabilidade. As Redes Neurais Artificiais foram escolhidas por terem grande poder de abstração, generalização e plasti- cidade. Através dos resultados obtidos comparando-se duas abordagens de arquiteturas, as redes Perceptron de múltiplas camadas (MLP) e as redes com atraso no tempo focadas (FTLFN), é possível constatar que é viável a utilização das mesmas para este fim, tendo-se alcançado resultados positivos no combate de speed cheating em MMOGs. / In the present work, Artificial Neural Networks are tested and evaluated in order to avoid a specific type of cheating, called Speed Cheating, in massively multi-player online games (MMOG). The MMOG represent a business model where meaningful financial resources amounts are involved, and increase each day. The models to avoid cheating, that could keep off players from games and servers, are localized in the network layer, at the protocol level. Examining the state-of-art, it was observed that research explor- ing the Artificial Intelligence application to this goal becomes relevant. The Artificial Neural Networks were chosen by their significant abstraction, generalization and plas- ticity characteristics. Through the results’s comparison from two different architectures approaches, the multi layer Perceptron network (MLP) and the focused time lagged net- work (FTLFN), it was possible to conclude that their utilization avoiding speed cheating in MMOG is possible, once good results were found in this work.

The purpose of this study was to explore undergraduate students' behaviors related to academic dishonesty. Additionally, this study examined students' perceptions of their own connectedness within the online classroom, and perceptions of the effectiveness of deterrents to cheating. Participants in the study were enrolled in online courses within the College of Arts and Science at a regionally accredited for-profit university. Students enrolled at the university represent a geographic cross section primarily within the U.S. but included students living outside the U.S. Participants were asked about their individual feelings of overall connectedness within the online classroom. Connectedness was determined using five subscales to create an overall connectedness score. The subscales were attachment, bonding, climate, connection, and engagement. Statistical tests were conducted to assess and describe any relationships between connectedness, academic dishonesty, and demographic factors. Additionally, participants provided feedback on various methods used in online classes to encourage academic honesty. This study discovered significant relationships between academic dishonesty and students' feelings of connectedness. Students' academic performance was related also to feelings of connectedness within the online classroom. Additionally, the frequency of engagement in academic dishonesty increased as the students neared graduation. The findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge related to pedagogy and course design of online classes. / by Artyce-Joy Chase. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Nos últimos anos Jogos Online Massivamente Multijogadores (MMOG) têm se expandido em popularidade e investimento, influenciado, especialmente, pela evolução da conexão residencial (conexões mais rápidas a preços mais baixos). Com o crescimento dessa demanda, surgem problemas na utilização da arquitetura cliente-servidor, normalmente utilizada em jogos comerciais. Entre as arquiteturas alternativas de suporte a MMOGs estão as arquiteturas peer-to-peer. Porém essas arquiteturas apresentam problemas relativos a segurança, problemas esses que possuem, muitas vezes, soluções de baixo desempenho, sendo impraticáveis em jogos reais. Entre os problemas de segurança mais significativos para MMOGs encontra-se o cheating, ou a ação que um ou mais jogador toma para burlar as regras em favor próprio. A preocupação com cheating agravase quando o efeito desse cheating pode causar danos irreversíveis à economia virtual e, potencialmente, afetar todos os jogadores. O presente trabalho faz uso de uma divisão celular do mundo virtual para restringir o impacto de um dado cheating a uma única célula, evitando que este se propague. Para tanto é realizada uma classificação do estado do jogador e utiliza-se uma técnica de detecção de cheating para cada uma das classificações. Foram realizados experimentos através de simulação para testes de aplicabilidade do modelo e análise de desempenho e acuracidade. Os testes indicam que o modelo proposto consegue, de forma eficaz, realizar a proteção da economia virtual, impedindo que a ocorrência de um cheating atinja todos os jogadores. / In the past few years, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) grew in both popularity and investment. This growth has been influenced by the evolution of residential connection (faster and cheaper connections). With the demand, some limitations imposed by the client-server architecture becomes more significant. Peer-to-peer architectures aim to solve those problems by distributing the game among several computers. However, those solutions usually lack security, or presents low performance. Among the problems, cheating can be considered the most significant to MMOGs. Cheating can be defined as the action taken by a player when this action is against the rules. This may be aggravated when this action can cause irreversible damage to the virtual economy and, potentially, affect all players in the virtual world. This work’s goal is to restrict the cheating impact using a cellular world division. The proposal is to restrict the cheating in a limited virtual space, preventing the propagation. A state classification is presented, and different cheating detection techniques are presented to each element of this classification. Simulation is used to make the experiments aiming to test the performance and accuracy of the proposal. Results indicate that the proposed solution can efficiently protect the virtual economy, restraining the effects of a cheating occurrence to a small portion of the virtual world.

Academic cheating frequency, motivating factors for cheating, and student reasons for cheating have been studied extensively for decades, but nearly all of the research has been conducted with typically-developing students. To date, only one published study has examined cheating among students with learning disabilites, despite over 2 million students in American schools having been diagnosed with a learning disability. Students who engage in academic cheating, as well as students who have learning disabilities, are more likely to have low levels of self-efficacy, hold more performance goal orientations, and have higher levels of impulsivity. Therefore, in the present study, individuals with a learning disability were expected to cite significantly more reasons for cheating related to those three variables, as well as to endorse cheating as being acceptable in more academic situations. Learning disability status, cheating tolerance, and reasons for cheating were measured in 77 Amazon Mechnical Turk adult participants through self-report surveys. Results revealed no difference in cheating tolerance between individuals with learning disabilities and their typically-developing peers. Individuals with a learning disability cited significantly more reasons for cheating related to low self-efficacy and performance goal orientations compared to their typically-developing peers, but not for reasons related to impulsivity. Strengths, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Chapter 1 shows that there is a negative relationship observed between sanctions and civil liberties in the target country, which is driven by how exposed the target country's trade was to the sanctioning countries. Using a fixed panel regression covering 160 countries from 1972-2005, it is found that import exposure to the sanctioning countries drives this negative relationship, with every percentage point of import exposure reducing the inverted FHI freedom score by 0.165 points. This implies that restricting imports to a country that promotes an oppressive response by the targeted government. Chapter 2 examines whether countries change their trade patterns in response to economic sanction threats in addition to imposed sanctions. Using a bilateral gravity panel dataset covering 180 countries from 1950-2005 I find that imposed sanctions cause a very significant 55.43% increase in purchases from third party suppliers or a smaller 49.78% increase in sales to third party buyers during sanction events. Sanction threats cause a 42.05% increase in purchases from third party suppliers, and a 42.76% increase in sales to third party buyers, all significant at the 1% level. I conclude that both imposed sanctions and sanction threats lead to a significant increase in trade with third party countries, preempting and subverting sanction regimes. Chapter 3 studies whether there is evidence of cheating during sanction events by examining the difference in reporting for exports in the selling country versus imports in the buying country. A systematic change in reporting behavior is detected, with the log difference of reported exports minus reported imports increasing 7.46% in the case of exporter imposed sanctions, and decreasing 9.86% in the case importer imposed sanctions. This is consistent with the theory that firms in the sanctioning countries face harsher penalties for being caught compared to the targeted countries.

Research on infidelity has suffered from inconsistency in how infidelity has been operationalized across studies. This study was designed to advance methodological considerations for defining infidelity and identifying offending spouses. A subjective definition of infidelity was obtained from each respondent via both closed- and open-ended items. The open-ended responses were applied to explore the definition of infidelity. Additionally, an indirect questioning method was adopted to identify offending spouses according to their own subjective definitions of cheating and test the effectiveness of this approach relative to direct questioning for identifying offending spouses. Furthermore, gender differences in acknowledging infidelity through both direct and indirect approaches in general as well as across the four self-defined categorical infidelity were examined. A community sample of 465 married or divorced individuals anonymously completed the survey via MTurk. Results showed two defining characteristics of infidelity that cut across modes of infidelity (sexual, emotional, computer-mediated, and solitary) were that infidelity occurs outside the relationship and without consent. The definition of infidelity of infidelity provided in response to an open-ended inquiry tended to be shorter among offending spouses—especially male offending spouses—than among non-offending spouses. More offending spouses were found via the indirect (42.9%) approach than the direct approach (12.7%), and more men than women acknowledged engaging in infidelity behaviors according to both the direct (16.6% vs. 9.1%) and indirect (48.2% vs. 38.0%) approaches. That said, gender-based statistical differences in propensity to commit self-defined infidelity were only found in sexual and computer-mediated forms of infidelity; propensity to commit self-defined emotional and solitary infidelity did not statistically differ between men and women; in all cases, however, gender differences were small. Results suggested that the indirect approach is better than direct questioning for identifying infidelity behaviors; the indirect approach elicited less social desirability bias. Implications for research and clinical practice are provided.

The Internet has enabled the popular pastime of playing video games to grow rapidly by connecting game players in disparate locations. However, with popularity have come the two challenges of hosting a large number of users and detecting cheating among users. For reasons of control, security, and ease of development, the most popular system for hosting on-line games is the client server architecture. This is also the most expensive and least scalable architecture for the game publisher, which drives hosting costs upwards with the success of the game. In addition to the expense of hosting, as a particular game grows more competitive and popular, the incentive to cheat for that game grows as well. All popular online games suffer from cheats in one form or another, and this cheating adversely affects game popularity and growth. In this dissertation we follow a hypothetical game company (GameCorp) as it surmounts challenges involved in running an on-line game. We develop a characterization of gamer habits and game workloads from data sampled over a period of years, and show the benefits and drawbacks of multiplexing online applications together in a single large server farm. We develop and evaluate a geographic redirection service for the public server architecture to match clients with servers. We show how the public server game architecture can be used to scalably host large persistent games such as massively multiplayer (MMO) games that previously used the client server architecture. Finally we develop a taxonomy for client cheating in on-line games to focus research efforts, and specifically treat one of the categories in detail: information exposure in peer-to-peer games. The thesis of this dissertation is: a methodology for accurate usage modeling of server resources can improve workload management; public-server resources can be leveraged in new ways to serve multiplayer on-line games; and that information exposure in peer-to-peer on-line games is preventable or detectable with the adoption of cryptographic protocols.

This dissertation studies bad behavior at large-scale using data traces from online video games. Video games provide a natural laboratory for exploring bad behavior due to their popularity, explicitly defined (programmed) rules, and a competitive nature that provides motivation for bad behavior. More specifically, we look at two forms of bad behavior: cheating and toxic behavior. Cheating is most simply defined as breaking the rules of the game to give one player an edge over another. In video games, cheating is most often accomplished using programs, or "hacks," that circumvent the rules implemented by game code. Cheating is a threat to the gaming industry in that it diminishes the enjoyment of fair players, siphons off money that is paid to cheat creators, and requires investment in anti-cheat technologies. Toxic behavior is a more nebulously defined term, but can be thought of as actions that violate social norms, especially those that harm other members of the society. Toxic behavior ranges from insults or harassment of players (which has clear parallels to the real world) to domain specific instances such as repeatedly "suiciding"" to help an enemy team. While toxic behavior has clear parallels to bad behavior in other online domains, e.g., cyberbullying, if gone unchecked it has the potential to "kill" a game by driving away its players. We first present a distributed architecture and reference implementation for the collection and analysis of large-scale social data. Using this implementation we then study the social structure of over 10 million gamers collected from a planetary scale Online Social Network, about 720 thousand of whom have been labeled cheaters, finding a significant correlation between social structure and the probability of partaking in cheating behavior. We additionally collect over half a billion daily observations of the cheating status of these gamers. Using about 10 months of detailed server logs from a community owned and operated game server we next analyze how relationships in the aforementioned online social network are backed by in-game interactions. Next, we use the insights gained and find evidence for a contagion process underlying the spread of cheating behavior and perform a data driven simulation using mathematical models for contagion. Finally, we build a model using millions of crowdsourced decisions for predicting toxic behavior in online games. To the best of our knowledge, this dissertation presents the largest study of bad behavior to date. Our findings confirm theories about cheating and unethical behavior that have previously remained untested outside of controlled laboratory experiments or only with small, survey based studies. We find that the intensity of interactions between players is a predictor of a future relationship forming. We provide statistically significant evidence for cheating as a contagion. Finally, we extract insights from our model for detecting toxic behavior on how human reviewers perceive the presence and severity of bad behavior.

Syften för denna studie har varit: ”att beskriva en variation av uppfattningar hos gymnasieelever på teoretiska gymnasieprogram vad gäller hur de uppfattar och resonerar omkring sitt eget skolfusk i förhållande till fenomen som eleverna själva uppfattar som betydelsefulla för det egna skolfusket” och ”att belysa elevers uppfattningar om sitt eget skolfusk genom fyra allmänt kända teoretiska perspektiv som kan antas tangera den förförståelse av elevers skolfusk som antas vanligt förekommande hos lärare på motsvarande gymnasieprogram.” Begreppet skolfusk har definierats och data har därefter samlats in genom kvalitativt utformade enkäter som besvarats av 36 gymnasielever från det studieförberedande samhällsvetenskapsprogrammet. Forskningsansatsen har varit fenomengrafisk och analysmetoden kontextuell analys. Huvudresultatet utgörs av fem kategorier som på kvalitativt skilda sätt beskriver elevernas uppfattningar kring skolfusk. Kategorierna har rubricerats efter det totala materialets mest meningsbärande aspekt, nämligen elevernas uppsåt/avsikt/intention med sitt skolfusk som utgörs av variationerna ”att klara av en tillfälligt besvärlig situation”, ”att utmana/provocera/protestera emot (skol)systemet”, ”att överleva i en skolsituation som upplevs för svår”, ”att höja betyg” och ”att slippa anstränga sig”. Empirin har också tolkats genom fyra teoretiska perspektiv som i studien ansetts representativa för lärares förförståelse kring elevers skolfusk. Av resultatet framgår att ett flertal elever i sina uppfattningar om eget skolfusk ensidigt orienterar sig åt prestationspsykologiska, sociologiska eller mikroekonomiska perspektiv. / The aims of this study have been: “to describe a variation of conceptions among upper secondary pupils in theoretical education programs concerning how they apprehend and reason about their own school cheating in relations to phenomena that the pupils themselves judge as meaningful for their own school cheating” and “to illustrate pupils conceptions of their own school cheating through four common known theoretical perspectives which can be considered to touch upon the precomprehension of pupils school cheating that is considered as frequent among teachers in corresponding education.” The conception school cheating has been defined and data have been collected through qualitatively designed questionnaires which have been answered by 36 upper secondary pupils in social science education preparing for ensuing studies. The research approach has been phenomenografical and the method of analyzing contextual analysis. The main result is constituted by five categories which in qualitative different ways describe the pupils conceptions of school cheating. The categories have been classified on the basis of the most meaningful aspect of the total data, “the pupils intentions of their school cheating” which is constituted by the variations “to manage a temporary troublesome situation”, “to challenge/provoke/protest upon the (school)system”, “to survive in a school situation which is experienced as to difficult”, “to raise grades” and “to avoid effort”. Empirical data have also been interpreted through four theoretical perspectives which in the study have been considered representative for teachers precomprehension of pupils school cheating. The result shows that a majority of pupils is one-sided orientated in their conceptions of their own school cheating towards perspectives of either achievement-psychology, sociology or micro-economics.