There is a small literature on excuse making in college, Here are a few of the articles that discuss it
Caron, M.D., Whitbourne, S. K., & Halgin, R. P. (1992). Fraudulent excuse-making among college students. Teaching of Psychology, 19, 90-93 Roig, M. & Caso, M. (2005). Lying and cheating: fraudulent excuse making, cheating, and plagiarism. The Journal of Psychology, 139, 485-494. O'Dell, C.D. & Hoyert, M.S. (in press). Grandma died again: Goal orientation and excuses in the classroom. Proceedings of the 19th Annual International Conference on Teaching and Learning. Caron, Whitbourne and Halgin (1992) found that 68% of the students sampled made at least one fraudulent excuse while in college and 99% indicated they had made at least one legitimate excuse while in college. Roig and Caso (2005) found that 72% of the students sampled indicated making at least one fraudulent excuse while in college and 100% at least one legitimate excuse. Our study collected data on documentation of excuses and found that 61% of the excuses in our study were not accompanied with documentation. The most common reason provided for fabricating an excuse was the hope of gaining more time to study or complete the assignment (Caron, Whitbourne and Halgin, 1992; Roig and Caso, 2005). Men were more likely than women to fabricate fraudulent excuses as well as to offer legitimate excuses. Students with GPAs of 3.00 or greater were less likely to fabricate excuses (Caron, Whitbourne and Halgin, 1992; Roig and Caso, 2005). The most common fraudulent excuses offered were personal illness, followed by family emergency and failure to understand the assignment (Caron, Whitbourne and Halgin, 1992; Roig and Caso, 2005). These were also the three most commonly offered legitimate excuses. The strategy of offering excuses to gain more time to study or complete an assignment doesn't appear to be effective, however. We found that when students offered an excuse their grade was over one letter grade lower than the class average. The effect was even more robust in the students who did not provide documentation for their excuses. These students earned markedly lower grades (M=58.5, SD=23.1) than those that could provide documentation (M=74.7, SD=13.7). Additionally, our research focused on student motivation and the results of the study are consistent with the idea that the pursuit of performance goals is linked with excuse making. Students who did not provide documented excuses endorsed performance goals more than mastery goals. They also pursued mastery goals less than the overall student population. A high proportion of undocumented excuses were made by students with high performance orientation scores. Performance goals are associated with a variety of maladaptive academic behaviors and fabricating excuses is certainly an example of a maladaptive academic behavior. Cynthia --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
