ABU DHABI // Girls are more honest and more ethical than boys, a new UAE study suggests.
They are less likely than boys to cheat in exams and more likely than boys to support tough punishment for those who do cheat.
As part of the study, a group of schoolchildren were given a written quiz and told not to turn the paper over because the answers were on the other side.
Twelve per cent of girls cheated; 18 per cent of boys did not.
“For me the sheer size of the gender differences was most surprising,” said Dr Calvert Jones, an assistant professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of the study.
“In many scenarios, girls judged ethical lapses more harshly than boys. This is a difference that also appears in studies in other countries, although not usually as large.”
Dr Jones also surveyed 172 pupils at two public high schools, one for boys and one for girls. Of those, 62.8 per cent were Emirati and the rest expatriate Arabs.
They were asked about their attitudes to issues such as copying homework, bribes and nepotism. The study found girls more likely to deal honestly with ethical dilemmas and “tended towards harsher punishments for unethical acts”.
They also “judged various ethically questionable actions as less justifiable compared with the ways in which boys judged the same actions”.
The study is published by the Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research.
Dr Natasha Ridge, executive director of the foundation, said the findings would help policymakers and educators to understand what drives cheating and identify the conditions in which pupils were more or less likely to cheat.
The study also found that when students were placed in diverse groups, such as a mix of Arab expats and Emiratis, the group was more creative, innovative and better at problem-solving than a homogenous group.
A mixed group of pupils was also more likely to judge unethical behaviour as unacceptable.
“Cheating is a phenomenon that occurs throughout the world, in every country. However, its impact on social trust means that the issue must be addressed in light of the UAE’s progressive approach to development,” Dr Ridge said.
“It is very important to continue to do research on these and other issues in education – not to shame schools, individuals or systems, but to help develop and improve them in order that the UAE can become one of the top countries in the world for education.”
Dr Jones said a nationally representative sample of students would be needed to confirm the preliminary findings, but the study offered “one building block that can provide important insights about the factors that affect ethical decision-making and the kinds of reasoning people use as they are faced with ethical dilemmas”.
She said more research was needed to help answer the questions raised by the study.
“We need to know more about why girls in this study showed more ethical decision-making compared with boys,” Dr Jones said.
“The strategies that we might be able to use to promote ethical decision-making should also be studied more systematically and more broadly in government bureaucracies, the private sector, and in academic settings.
“Beginning in the schools, social norms against cheating and other forms of rule-breaking should be communicated clearly, and more consistently upheld, so that young people are aware of expectations.”
rpennington@thenational.ae
