Ethical Behavior of Business Students at Rocky University

During the global recession of 2008 and 2009, there were many accusations of unethical behavior by Wall Street executives, financial managers, and other corporate officers. At that time, an article appeared suggesting that part of the reason for such unethical business behavior may stem from the fact that cheating has become more prevalent among business students. The article reported that 86% of business students admitted to cheating at some time during their academic career as compared to 77% of non-business students.

Cheating has been a concern of the dean of the College of Business at Rocky University for several years. Some faculty members in the college believe that cheating is more widespread at Rocky than at other universities, while other faculty members think that cheating is not a major problem at the college. To resolve some of these issues, the dean commissioned a study to assess the current ethical behavior of business students at Rocky. As part of this study, an anonymous exit survey was administered to a sample of 90 business students from this year’s graduating class. Responses to the following questions were used to obtain data regarding three types of cheating.

• During your time at Rocky, did you ever present work copied off the internet as your own?____ Yes____ No

• During your time at Rocky, did you ever copy answers off another student’s exam?____ Yes____ No

• During your time at Rocky, did you ever collaborate with other students on projects that were supposed to be completed individually?____ Yes____ No

Any student who answered yes to one or more of these questions was considered to have been involved in some type of cheating. The complete data set is in the file named Rocky, linked at the bottom of the page.

Managerial ReportPrepare a report (see below) for the dean of the college that summarizes your assessment of the nature of cheating by business students at Rocky University. Be sure to include the following seven (7) items in your report.

1. To summarize the data, compute the proportion of all students, the proportion of all male students, and the proportion of all female students who
   1. presented work copied off the internet as their own
   2. copied answers off another student’s exam
   3. collaborated with other students on projects that were supposed to be completed individually.  Then comment on your findings.
2. Develop 95% confidence intervals for the proportion of all students, the proportion of all male students, and the proportion of all female students who were involved in some type of cheating.
3. Develop 95% confidence intervals for the proportion of all students, the proportion of all male students, and the proportion of all female students who were involved in copying off the internet.
4. Develop 95% confidence intervals for the proportion of all students, the proportion of all male students, and the proportion of all female students who were involved in copying off another’s exam.
5. Develop 95% confidence intervals for the proportion of all students, the proportion of all male students, and the proportion of all female students who were involved in collaborating on an individual project.
6. Conduct a hypothesis test (using either the p-value approach or the critical value approach) to determine if the proportion of all business students at Rocky University who were not involved in some type of cheating is less than that of all business students elsewhere.  Use α = 0.05. Do not forget to include the correctly worded hypotheses.
7. What advice would you give to the dean based upon your analysis of the data? Focus your advice on answering the following: What is the magnitude of the issue? What would you recommend for both students and faculty? What is the potential impact on relationships with the business community and what would you recommend?  How can this study be improved?

Write a report that adheres to the Written Assignment Requirements under the heading “Expectations for CSU-Global Written Assignments” found in the CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements.  As with all written assignments at CSU-Global, you should have in-text citations and a reference page. An example paper is provided in the MTH410 Guide to Writing with Statistics, linked at the bottom of the page.

Your report must contain the following:

• A title page in APA style.
• An introduction that summarizes the problem.
• The body of the paper should answer the questions posed in the problem by communicating the results of your analysis. Include results of calculations, as well as charts and graphs, where appropriate.
• A conclusion paragraph that addresses your findings and what you have determined from the data and your analysis. 
• In-text citations from a minimum of three sources in addition to your textbook. The CSU-Global Library is a good place to locate these sources.
• A reference page.

Submit your Excel file in addition to your report.NOTE:  Submitting your Excel file will aid in grading with partial credit if errors are found in the paper.