The Effects of Life Domains, Constraints, and Motivations on Academic Dishonesty: A Partial Test and Extension of Agnew’s General Theory

Recently, Robert Agnew introduced a new general theory of crime and delinquency in which he attempted to corral the vast array of theoretical “causes” of criminal conduct into a more parsimonious statement organized into one of five life domains: self, family, peers, school, and work as well as constraints against crime and motivation for it. These domains are depicted as the source of constraints and motivations and whose effects are, in part, mediated by these constraints and motivations. Based on self-report data on academic dishonesty from a sample of college students, the present study attempts to test this general theory. While several of the life domain variables had significant effects of cheating in the baseline model, all of these effects were fully mediated by constraints and motivations. In the final model, academic dishonesty was observed to be most significantly affected by the perceived severity of formal sanction threats, the number of credit hours enrolled, the frequency of skipping classes, and pressure from friends.