Gender differences in academic integrity: East African and South African university students

The objective of this study was first to explore the prevalence of academic integrity in East African and South African universities. Second, it was to examine the gender differences in academic integrity for each one of the four countries and overall gender differences in the entire sample which comprised 393 men and 347 women with a total of 740 participants. The findings showed that academic dishonesty was a common phenomenon both in East African countries and in South Africa. The level of academic dishonesty was comparable to what has been reported in other countries such as the UK and USA. From the findings, four patterns of academic dishonesty gender differences emerged. In the first category, there was no gender difference, whereas in the second category, the difference was such that women engaged in academic dishonesty more than men. In the third category, there were more men engaged in academic misconduct than there were women, which was more consistent and predominant than was the case with women. Fourthly, in the overall results for each country and the entire sample, there were no significant gender differences in academic dishonesty.