Integrity Starts with Preparation: A Correlational Study on Students’ Exam Readiness and Ethical Understanding

Abstract

This research explores students’ readiness and understanding of final examination ethics within the Department of Information Technology and Communication at Politeknik Muadzam Shah. The objectives are to examine how prepared the students are for their final examinations and to assess their understanding of the rules and ethical expectations related to those exams. It also seeks to explore whether there is a connection between how ready students feel and how well they understand exam ethics, including issues such as plagiarism, cheating, and other forms of academic misconduct. A quantitative approach was conducted involving 188 respondents from a total population of 324 active students. A structured questionnaire adapted from a previous study was used, and its reliability was confirmed with a high Cronbach’s alpha value. The data was analysed using IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Statistics for reliability tests, descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation. The findings indicate that both students’ readiness (M = 4.41) and understanding of final examination ethics (M = 4.53) were at a high level. A strong, positive correlation (r = 0.775, p < 0.001) was found between students’ exam readiness and their understanding of final examination ethics. The findings indicate that students who are more prepared tend to have higher understanding of ethical practices, highlighting the importance of current final examination and final assessment briefings and institutional guidelines are effective in fostering ethical awareness. There is a need to integrate exam preparation strategies with academic integrity education to support more holistic student development.