Academic dishonesty among Italian nursing students: a longitudinal study

Considering the ethical issues related to nursing and that Ethics is an integral part of the nursing education in thedegree course, one would suppose that academic dishonesty might be less frequent in nursing students than instudents of other disciplines. However, several studies show that this trend of deceitful behaviour seems to besimilar among the university nursing students and those of other disciplines.The aim of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of academic dishonesty in the classroom from alongitudinal perspective within a cohort of Italian nursing students.A non-experimental longitudinal design was used. All nursing students were recruited from the Nursing ScienceBachelor Degree Program of a big Italian university in the centre of Italy and participants were part of an ongoinglongitudinal research project which started in 2011 on nursing students' wellbeing.The results show that students get accustomed to taking academically deceitful actions. They come to considertheir behaviours acceptable and normal, thereby stabilizing them, which increases the probability of stabilizingsubsequent deceitful behaviours. The stability through time of academic cheating behaviours committed duringhigher education, within the study's timeframe, provides important perspectives into the establishment ofrigorous standards of ethical and moral behaviours by the students.