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Addressing Pre-Knowledge in Exam Cheating

Nathan Thompson, PhDSeptember 9, 2024

In the realm of academic dishonesty and high-stakes exams such as Certification, the term “pre-knowledge” is an important concern in test security and validity. Understanding what pre-knowledge entails and its implications in exam cheating can offer valuable insights into how the integrity of tests and their scores can be compromised. According to studies by Cizek and Wollack (2017), nearly 50% of high school students in the United States acknowledge having cheated on an exam at least once in the past year. Furthermore, around 10% of university students admit to copying answers from peers during exams (McCabe, 2024). These statistics highlight the prevalence of academic dishonesty across different educational levels, underscoring the importance of robust exam security measures.

What is Pre-Knowledge in Exam Cheating?

Pre-knowledge refers to having advance access to information or materials that are not available to all students before an exam. This can manifest in various ways, from receiving the actual questions that will be on the test to obtaining detailed information about the exam’s content through unauthorized means. Essentially, it’s an unfair advantage that undermines the principles of a level playing field in assessments.  Psychometricians would refer to it as a threat to validity.

How Pre-Knowledge Occurs

The concept of pre-knowledge encompasses several scenarios. For instance, a student might gain insight into the exam questions through illicit means such as hacking into a teacher’s email, collaborating with insiders, or even through more subtle means like overhearing discussions. This sort of advantage is particularly problematic because it negates the purpose of assessments, which is to evaluate a student’s understanding and knowledge acquired through study and effort.

Perhaps the greatest source of pre-knowledge is “brain dump” websites, where people who take the test go to soon afterwards and write all the questions they can remember, dumping their short-term memory.  Over time, this can lead to large portions of the item bank being exposed to the public. These sites are often intentionally based in countries where cheating is not legally recognized, leaving little to no legal recourse to prevent their operations.

Implications of Pre-Knowledge

Pre-knowledge not only disrupts the fairness of the examination process but also poses significant challenges for test sponsors. Institutions must be vigilant and proactive in safeguarding against such breaches. Implementing robust security measures, such as secure testing environments and rigorous monitoring, is crucial to prevent the unauthorized dissemination of exam content.student cheating on test

Pre-knowledge and other forms of cheating can have far-reaching consequences beyond the immediate context of the exam. For instance, students who gain an unfair advantage may achieve higher grades, which can influence their future academic and career opportunities. This creates an inequitable situation where hard work and honest efforts are overshadowed by dishonesty.

Engaging in brain-dump activities is actually a form of intellectual property theft.  Many organizations spend a lot of money to develop high-quality assessments, sometimes totaling in the thousands of dollars per item!  Cheating in this manner will actually increase the costs of certification exams or educational opportunities.  Moreover, the organizations can then pursue legal action against cheaters.

Most importantly, cheating on exams can invalidate scores and therefore the entire credential.  If everyone is cheating and passing a certification exam, then the certification itself becomes worthless.  So by participating in brain-dump activities, you are actually hurting yourself.  And if the purpose of the test is to protect the public, such as ensuring that people working in healthcare fields are actually qualified, you are hurting the general public.  If you are going into healthcare to help patients, you need to realize that brain-dump activity only ends up hurting patients in the end.

Tips to Prevent Pre-Knowledge

Educational institutions and other test sponsors play a pivotal role in addressing the issue of pre-knowledge. Here are some effective strategies to help prevent pre-knowledge and maintain the integrity of academic assessments.  You might also benefit from this discussion on credentialing exams.

  1. Secure Testing Environments: Ensure exams are administered in a controlled environment where access to unauthorized materials is restricted.
  2. Monitor and Supervise: Use proctors and surveillance to oversee exam sessions and detect any suspicious behavior.
  3. Randomize Questions: Utilize question banks with randomized questions to prevent the predictable pattern of exam content.
  4. Strengthen Digital Security: Implement robust cybersecurity measures to protect exam content and prevent unauthorized access.
  5. Educate Examinees: Foster a culture of academic integrity by educating students about the consequences of cheating and the importance of honest efforts.
  6. Regularly Update Procedures: Review and update security measures and examination procedures regularly to address emerging threats.
  7. Encourage Open Communication: Provide support and resources for students struggling with their studies to reduce the temptation to seek unfair advantages.
  8. Strong NDA: This is one of the most important approaches.  If someone signs a Non-Disclosure Agreement which tells them that if they engage in cheating that they might not only fail the exam but be blocked from the entire profession and subject to lawsuits, this can be a huge deterrent.
  9. Multiple forms: Make multiple versions of the exam, and rotate them frequently.
  10. LOFT/CAT: Linear on the fly testing (LOFT) makes nearly infinite parallel versions of the exam, increasing security.  Computerized adaptive testing (CAT) creates a personalized exam for each candidate.
  11. Scan the internet: You can search the internet for text strings from your items, helping you find the brain dump sites and address them.

 

What if it happens?

There are two aspects to this: finding that it happened, and then deciding what to do about it.

To find that it happened, there are several types of evidence.

  1. Video – If there was proctoring, do we have video, perhaps of someone taking pictures of the exam with their phone?
  2. Technology – Perhaps a post on a brain dump site was done with someone’s email address or IP address.
  3. Eyewitness – You might get tipped off by another candidate that has higher integrity.
  4. Psychometric forensics – There are some ways to find this.  On the brain dump side, you might find candidates that don’t attempt all the items on the test but spend most of the time on a few… because they are memorizing them.  On the other end, you might find candidates that get a high score in a very short amount of time.  There are also much more advanced methods, as discussed in this book.

What should your organization do?  First of all, you need a test security plan ahead of time.  In that, you should lay out the processes as well as the penalties.  This ensures that examinees have due process.  Unfortunately, some organizations just stick their head in the sand; as long as candidates are paying the registration fees and the end stakeholders are not complaining, why rock the boat?

Summary

In conclusion, pre-knowledge in exam cheating represents a serious breach of academic integrity that undermines the educational process. It highlights the need for vigilance, robust security measures, and a culture of honesty within educational institutions. By understanding and addressing the nuances of pre-knowledge, educators and students can work together to uphold the values of fairness and integrity in academic assessments.

SIFT, developed by Assessment Systems Corporation (ASC), is specialized software designed to compute various collusion indices for detecting potential cheating in exams. Unlike many data forensics methods that require psychometricians to write custom code, SIFT provides a streamlined solution by automating these analyses. The software can also aggregate results based on group variables like testing locations or classrooms, making it particularly useful for large-scale test security evaluations.

References

Cizek, G. J., & Wollack, J. A. (2016). Exploring cheating on tests: The context, the concern, and the challenges. In Handbook of quantitative methods for detecting cheating on tests (pp. 3-19). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315743097

McCabe, D. (2024). Cheating and honor: Lessons from a long-term research project. Second Handbook of Academic Integrity, 599-610.

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Nathan Thompson, PhD

Nathan Thompson earned his PhD in Psychometrics from the University of Minnesota, with a focus on computerized adaptive testing. His undergraduate degree was from Luther College with a triple major of Mathematics, Psychology, and Latin. He is primarily interested in the use of AI and software automation to augment and replace the work done by psychometricians, which has provided extensive experience in software design and programming. Dr. Thompson has published over 100 journal articles and conference presentations, but his favorite remains https://scholarworks.umass.edu/pare/vol16/iss1/1/ .
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