Using a Modified Bookmark Procedure to Help Identify Reasonable Consequences for Academic Integrity Violations.

Area of Science:

• Higher Education Policy
• Academic Integrity Research
• Educational Measurement

Background:

• Institutions require clear academic conduct policies to uphold integrity and ensure legal defensibility.
• Determining appropriate sanctions for academic misconduct is challenging due to the subjective nature of offenses.
• Existing policies often lack objective criteria for consequence severity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel, objective method for determining reasonable sanctions for academic misconduct.
• To address the challenge of subjective consequence assignment in academic integrity policies.
• To develop evidence-based policy recommendations for academic misconduct sanctions.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a variation of the Bookmark procedure, a psychometric standard-setting technique.
• Applied the procedure to empirical survey data on academic misconduct.
• Investigated data to establish appropriate cut scores and ranges for sanctions.

Main Results:

• Developed a novel method for objectively determining sanctions for academic misconduct.
• Provided a framework for setting consequence ranges based on offense severity.
• Generated empirical data to support policy development.

Conclusions:

• The Bookmark procedure offers a valuable tool for creating objective academic misconduct policies.
• This method can aid institutions in establishing fair and defensible consequences.
• Encourages wider adoption of this procedure for policy development in various contexts.