Convenience Theory

SECTION 2: PERSONAL INTEGRATED THEORY

As discussed in Section 1, college students cheat for a variety of reasons and researchers have proposed numerous sociological/criminological theories to explain why people commit crime. Certain aspects of some of these theories have been combined to formulate a new theory of why college students cheat. This new integrated theory is the "convenience theory” of cheating. All criminological theories assume that crime is not a random event, that it is more common at particular times, places, and circumstances and among particular types of persons (Cite) The convenience theory of cheating also makes this assumption. College student cheating is not a random occurrence, it also occurs at particular times, places, and circumstances and among particular types of students.

What is convenience?

Convenience is defined as taking the handiest or easiest way to achieve a goal. When applied to cheating, the convenient way is the path that saves the most effort on the work required to achieve good grades. There are two primary ways to reach a goal, the hard way and the easy way. Just as water trickling down a hill seeks the easiest path to follow, convenience theory proposes that some students will seek the most convenient path to follow toward achieving good grades. Since the legal path to good grades is many times the most difficult path, the most convenient path to good grades is many times the illegal path.

Convenience has become a necessity in today’s society. Everyone is surrounded by things such as convenience stores, automatic teller machines, and cellular telephones—things that were designed to make daily tasks more convenient. Today's electronic devices make even mundane tasks convenient to accomplish.