Studies on academic integrity reveal high rates of plagiarism and cheating among students. We have developed an online teaching tool, Integrity Games ( https://integgame.eu/ ), that uses serious games to teach academic integrity. In this paper, we test the impact of a soft intervention – a short quiz – that was added to the Integrity Games website to increase users’ interest in learning about integrity. Based on general principles of behavioral science, our quiz highlighted the intricacy of integrity issues, generated social comparisons, and produced personalized advice. We expected that these interventions would create a need for knowledge and encourage participants to spend more time on the website. In a randomized controlled trial involving N = 405 students from Switzerland and France, half of the users had to take a short quiz before playing the serious games, while the other half could directly play the games. We measured how much time they spent playing the games, and, in a post-experimental survey, we measured their desire to learn about integrity issues and their understanding of integrity issues. Contrary to our expectations, the quiz had a negative impact on time spent playing the serious games. Moreover, the quiz did not increase participants' desire to learn about integrity issues or their overall understanding of the topic. Our quiz did not have any measurable impact on curiosity or understanding of integrity issues, and may have had a negative impact on time spent on the Integrity games website. Our results highlight the difficulty of implementing behavioral insights in a real-world setting. The study was preregistered at https://osf.io/73xty .

中文翻译：

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推动学术诚信教育的令人费解的失败：一项随机对照试验

对学术诚信的研究表明，学生中抄袭和作弊的比例很高。我们开发了一种在线教学工具，Integrity Games ( https://integgame.eu/ )，它使用严肃的游戏来教授学术诚信。在本文中，我们测试了软干预（一个小测验）的影响，该干预被添加到 Integrity Games 网站中，以提高用户了解诚信的兴趣。基于行为科学的一般原理，我们的测验强调了诚信问题的复杂性，产生了社会比较，并提出了个性化的建议。我们预计这些干预措施将产生对知识的需求，并鼓励参与者在网站上花费更多时间。在一项涉及来自瑞士和法国的 N = 405 名学生的随机对照试验中，一半用户在玩严肃游戏之前必须进行简短测验，而另一半则可以直接玩游戏。我们测量了他们玩游戏的时间，并且在实验后调查中，我们测量了他们了解诚信问题的愿望以及他们对诚信问题的理解。与我们的预期相反，测验对玩严肃游戏的时间产生了负面影响。此外，测验并没有增加参与者了解诚信问题或对该主题的整体理解的愿望。我们的测验对好奇心或对诚信问题的理解没有任何可衡量的影响，并且可能对在诚信游戏网站上花费的时间产生负面影响。我们的结果凸显了在现实环境中实施行为洞察的难度。该研究已在 https://osf.io/73xty 上预先注册。