GHOST-WRITING SERVICE UTILISATION AMONGST INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

Table of Content

Table of Contents 2

Abstract 3

Introduction 3

Problem statement 4

Literature Review.....................................................................................................................................5

Research Methods ...................................................................................................................................6

Results .....................................................................................................................................................7

Discussion ...............................................................................................................................................9

Feedback and Reflections .....................................................................................................................10

Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................10

References.............................................................................................................................................12

Appendix ..............................................................................................................................................13
ABSTRACT

A quantitative study with open and closed questions consisting mainly of multiple-choice questions on a
likert scale, to gauge student sentiment and determine any unknown factors that may affect a student’s
decision to use ghost-writing services.

The biggest underlying factor leading to international student’s use of ghost-writing services is the
quantity and difficulty of their workload. The implications of studying these underlying factors are
numerous, most notably the fact that they may demonstrate need for change in the delivery of
academic material and the learning process. Examples of such externalities include global disruption
caused by sars-covid19.

For the most part, q4 student responses indicated (84.21%) they have never hired a ghost writer before,
furthermore 52.63 % of q20 responses don’t believe that universities have been effective at reducing the
need for ghost-writing services. Despite majority of responses denoting their awareness of the definition
of ghost-writing services its important to note only 44.44% of q14 responses believed strongly that their
level of academic English strongly influenced where or not a student is more likely to hire ghost-writer.

Q3 results also indicate that majority of students sentiment determine ghost writing to be an unethical
practice in academia. This sentiment is more than likely explained by the fact that all q5 responses
stated that university material was relevant even after completion of their studies. It’s also important to
note that majority responsive they are fully aware of the definition of ghost-writing

1.0. INTRODUCTION
Has academic plagiarism become a norm amongst students? This academic study aimed to determine
the factors that directly influence international business student’s utilisation of ghost-writing services.
According to our survey majority of students consider using ghost-writing services to be unethical.
Ghost-writing, in this case more commonly referred to as plagiarism, can be defined as the anonymous
contractual contribution of content on behalf of an individual for an agreed upon financial return
(gøtzsche et al,2007).

Prior empirical research papers have all focused-on quantifying student sentiment across large sets of
population, but it is still necessary to sample student views, citing the rapid change in delivery mediums
for academic content and learning. A change from offline in person learning to online platforms. It is
therefore pertinent to review all prior assumptions of the possible externalities affecting the difficulty
and quantity of academic workload and whether it may lead to the use of ghost-writing services in
business academia. This academic study attempted to empirically quantify the proportion of known
factors that may influence a student’s desire to utilise ghost-writing services, by using a randomised
survey questionnaire. Due to the large, required dataset of empirical survey data from a student body, it
would not be practical to conduct a purely quantitative study, to derive adequate meaning from that
data the sample size required to validate the internal consistency of the derived data would have to be
very large consisting of thousands of responses. It was far more practical to downsize sample size to
about 20 responses considering the available timeline.

In this case it is pertinate to note that utilising a quantitative study ensures all presented assumptions in
the presentation were easily understandable.

1.1. PROBLEM STATEMENT

Fifty two percent of this studies student responses determined that active measures put in place by
universities were ineffective at curbing the use of ghost-writing services amongst students. This is
further exacerbated by the fact that some universities don’t adequately vet the academic English
proficiency of their student’s. For example, Australia`s ongoing wrangle with academic plagiarism where
the government has had to pass legislation in an attempt to deter contract cheating by fining a service
provider can be fined up $100,000 in a provable case (Tackling contract cheating, 2021). It is important
to note that education is a major export for the Netherlands with a value addition of 29 billion euros per
annum to the country’s GDP (Dutch trade in facts and figures, 2020).Its is therefore important to denote
that the laws and regulations set by government play a major role in ultimately determining the spread
of contract cheating amongst students. The justification for this research consists of demonstrating just
how pervasive contract cheating has become, prior to the pandemic most delivery of academic material
consisted of lectures, it could be argued that the combination of anonymous marking and online content
delivery has increased the likely hood of contract cheating. Therefore, the goal of this research is to
validate the critical factors leading to contract cheating, survey responses collected from the survey can
be used to advise more effective countermeasures for reducing contract cheating.

1.2. LITERATURE REVIEW

1.2.1. The growing of ghost writing and plagiarism university academic writings
Referring to Mr. (Clarke, 2006), plagiarism activities may have originated in England around the 17th
century and after plagiarism, there were other developed ways of cheating, especially in educational
institutions where students, in general, have participated in doing plagiarism and ghost writing activities.
The development of these non-traditional activities has become a powerful threat to education
nowadays, authors like(Clarke, 2006) found out a lot about how these activities of plagiarism, ghost
writing, and contract to cheat are done and what encouraged and how it occurred in daily life. So, their
survey involved the investigation of the internet site --- Rent A Programmer which provides dual
function as both an internet site where a computer operator searches for answers to computer-related
challenges and as an internet site (website) where the scholars can outsource their tasks, assignments.
So, from their outcomes or results, the authors have concluded that the practice of ghostwriting was
becoming greater and spreading like wildfire and thus, the possibility should a common practice
onindistinguishable sites, Rent A Coder. According to their survey outcome, a google search for “essay
writing website” will readily bring out such as an essaytyper.com, grademiners.com,
bid4papers.com/write-my-essay.html. while (Lancaster and Culwin, 2005) highlight the prevalence of
the routine in the sciences, (Mammen and Meyiwa, 2013) reflect that just not unlike traditional aspects
of plagiarism (copy& paste), the action of agreement cheating, and ghostwriting is widespread in all
fields from the system which holds information, Arts, Humanities to imaginative writing.

Walker and Townley (2012) give perception into the altered forms the ghostwriting operator takes. The
author set out the various levels of ghostwriting or various degrees in which duty be able to be
ghostwritten. In some situations, cases, a prominent writer substitutes the real writer is not recognized
and is the ghostwriting agent. In some other cases, the prominent writer receives much more
appreciation than the real authors whose names are published in small caps. By exploring the emerging
forms of plagiarism, (Walker and Townley, 2012) in expressing the opinion that while agreement
cheating persists elusive and problematic, it could handle the educational mentors from their objective.
Rather, the center of interest should remain on supporting the (trustworthy scholars and decent
academic practice) the writers concluded that such help would not only improve the trustworthy
student’s development, but it will support trustworthiness in scholars.

1.2.2. The motivation behind the practice of contract cheating and Ghost writing

To get to know what really influence international students to use ghost writing in their academic
studies was the target in conducting related research to this fraud activity. The willingness of
participating in ghost writing pushed us to pass anonymous research to university students and the
feedback led us to a certain conclusion as you will come to see. By finding the main reasons which force
scholars to decide or risk themselves into these activities and some of the factors we found to involve:
being afraid of getting lower grades in their exams or assignment, the problem with academic languages
for English for academic for the students who come from their countries where academic language is
not their first language, fears of being caught due to plagiarism and their related punishment, the
number of workloads also was determined as a factor which could influence students, in general, to use
ghost writing due to the short time limit, these reasons could the most powerful factor to push
international scholar to participate in the use ghost writing in academic studies, laziness.

The feedbacks gave us a range of factors that encourage the scholar to use ghost writers that give more
data than the findings of (Clarke, 2006) Who have shown that students’ willingness in participating in
academic cheating is because of moral bankruptcy. the various outcomes from a various number of
research do not unrelate in a different location on the planet. Moreover, distinguishable notion in the
discourse on the reason why scholars take a risk to participate in academic cheating in the form of
plagiarism and ghost writing as was written in the research paper of Lancaster and Culwin, 2005).
Additionally participating in qualitative study through anonymous findings pathway helped us to gather
more information from a different group of people but we did especially focus on the people who are
still in academic studies or those who have been doing university courses for a certain long time ago. As
the objective was to collect data from the number of questions which has been established by our group
research. Furthermore, we have looked at the consequence of using ghost writers in academic papers or
studies, these wrongdoing in-class assignments could cause a tremendous amount of trouble in society
after completing the university courses. For example, using ghostwriting or other methods of cheating in
medical field school would create a catastrophic on the life of people because of lacking credibility of
knowledge in medical, listing many fields like banking, engineering, journalism with many more
academic courses.

1.4. RESEARCH METHODS

This paper, just like so many research gathering data or information during the time research is being
done requires many steps to get the result and reaching to participants also is not easy especially in this
period where the variant of covid-19 omicron has struck with a high speed in spreading all over the
country and many schools, institutions, university are working the tasks from home. Then, a qualitative
method was adopted and due to time constraints, we created a cross-sectional quantitative study which
open and closed questions. in our research where the focus was finding out the reason behind the use
of ghost writing in academic university studies by international students. An open interview question
was sent out through various social media platforms and the interview was done in an anonymous
pathway where we couldn’t know the name of the participants and there were no force participants,
probing our prior assumption on the factors leading to the extensive use of ghost writing services in
business academia, the question was answered through the willingness of anybody who participated in
the interview to give their point of view and experience they have about ghost writing in the academic
paper especially for international students, from the result nineteen person have provided their answer
regarding on the questions that we have provided with a various view or answers. Here, below we are
going to get into the result from the participants

1.5. RESULTS

Question One: How important is it to you that you truly enjoy University Academia?

From the result, it was found that 11 respondents representing (57.89%) of the respondents claimed
that it was extremely important for them that they enjoy University academic, and 8 respondents
representing (42.11%) said somewhat important. This results showed that, majority of the respondents
representing (57.89%) were of the opinion that they extremely enjoy University academia.

Question Two: How well do you get along with your classmates?

From the result, it was found that 5 of respondents were on a scale of 50-60, 3 respondents were on a
scale of 61-70, 3 respondents were on a scale of 71-80, 3 respondents were on a scale of 81-90, and 5
respondents were on a scale of 91-100. This results revealed that majority of the respondents claimed
that get along well with their classmates.

Question Three: Would you consider ghostwriting to be unethical?

From the result, it was gathered that 10 respondents representing (52.63%) said yes, and 9 respondents
representing (47.37%) said no. This implies that majority of the respondents do not consider
ghostwriting to be unethical.

Question Four: Have you ever hired a ghost writer?

From the result, it was found out that 3 of the respondents representing (15.79%) said yes, and 16
representing (84.21%) said no. This implies that, majority of the respondents has never hired a ghost
writer, rather they have been responsible for their course work and research task themselves.

Question Five: Do you think what you’re learning at University is what you want to do in the future?

From the result, it revealed that 6 of the respondents representing (31.58%) said to extremely relevant,
while 13 representing (68.42%) agreed to somewhat relevant. This implies that majority of the
respondents agreed to extremely relevant that what they are learning at University is what they actually
want to do in the future.

Question Ten: To what extent does workload affect the probability using of ghostwriting services?

The result showed that 9 of the respondents representing (47.37%) agreed to a great deal and moderate
amount respectively, while only 1 respondent representing (5.26%) said none at all. This implies that,
majority of the respondents agreed collectively that work affect the probability of engaging the service
of a ghost writer.

Question Eleven: How well does your supervisor facilitate your professional growth?

Findings from the result showed that 8 representing (42.11%) agreed to extremely well, 10 representing
(52.63%) agreed to somewhat well, and 1 representing (5.26%) said none well at all. This implies that
most of the respondents agreed that their supervisor extremely well facilitate their professional growth.
Question Twelve: In your honest opinion, what amount of academic work load would you find to be a
good balance for short course work modules? E.g. a word count between 2500- 5000 words?

Result showed that, 8 respondents agreed to word count of 2000 to 3000 words, and 3 respondents
agreed to word count of 4000 to 5000 words. This showed that the respondents see a word count of
2000-3000 to be fair for a short course work modules

Question Thirteen: How easy is it to obtain the resources you need from the university library system?

Findings showed that 4 respondents representing (21.05%) agreed to extremely easy, and 15
representing (78.95%) agreed to somewhat easy. This implies that most of the respondents agreed that
they find it extremely easy to obtain the resources they need for the university library system.

Question Fourteen: Has your level of academic English made using ghost writing services more
appealing?

Findings from the result showed that, 8 respondents representing (44.44%) agreed to very likely, 4
representing (22.22%) agreed to neither likely nor unlikely, and 6 representing (33.33%) said very
unlikely. This implies that, most of the respondents it was very likely that their level of academic English
made them use ghost writing services more appealing.

Question Nineteen: Are you aware of the definition of ghostwriting?

Findings showed that 17 of the respondents said yes that they are aware of the definition of
ghostwriting, while 2 representing (10.53%) said no. This shows that most of the respondents are fully
aware of what ghostwriting implies.

Question Twenty: Has your university been effective at removing the need to utilize ghost writing
services?

Findings showed that, 9 respondents representing (47.37%) said yes, and 10 representing (52.63%) said
no. This shows that most of the respondents agreed that the university has not really been effective
towards eliminating the need for ghostwriting services.

1.6. DISCUSSION

From the findings, it was observed that majority of the respondents are aware of ghost writer. This was
confirmed in the works of Clarke (2006) who revealed many about how these activities of plagiarism,
ghostwriting, and contract to cheat are done and what encouraged and how it occurred in daily life. The
author concluded that the practice of ghostwriting was becoming greater and spreading like wildfire and
thus, the possibility should a common practice on indistinguishable site. Corroborating this finding, the
works of Lancaster and Culwin (2005) also highlighted the prevalence of the routine in the sciences, and
showed that just not unlike traditional aspects of plagiarism (copy & paste), the action of agreement
cheating, and ghostwriting is widespread in all fields from the system which holds information, arts,
humanities to imaginative writing.
In addition, it was observed that there are various factors responsible for students to contract their work
to ghost writer, such as for higher grades, academic work load and stress, and their level of
understanding English. In tandem to this finding, the works of Walker and Townley (2012) revealed the
factors influencing international students to use ghostwriting in their academic studies, and showed that
being afraid of getting lower grades in their exams or assignment, the problem with academic languages
for English for academic for the students who come from their countries where academic language is
not their first language, fears of being caught due to plagiarism and their related punishment, the
number of workloads also was determined as a factor which could influence students, in general, to use
ghostwriting due to the short time limit, these reasons could the most powerful factor to push
international scholar to participate in the use ghostwriting in academic studies, laziness. Going by all
these factors, it is no surprise that students might try to seek for the service of a ghost writer in order to
achieve good grades and academic performance.

1.7. FEEDBACK AND REFLECTIONS

The feedback from friends and lecturers showed that in the area of presentation, there is the need for
the group members to have proper rehearsal and coordination prior to the main presentation. The
essence of this is to ensure proper structuring and planning of the presentation. In addition, we have
been able to reflect on our end that, we must improve on our communication and social skills, as well as
better teamwork spirit in order to ensure a smooth and well organized presentation. Furthermore, we
need to also reflect on the issue of time management. Time management is a very important factor, not
just in our presentation but in our everyday life and routine. Having a proper time management will
ensure activities are well executed at the right time. The essence is to ensure that we properly manage
our time, and to extract the vital points of our presentation in our slide. Corroborating the above, in the
works of Dallimore and Mickel (2013) revealed the ability of an individual to properly manage his or her
time at the workplace, will bring about a positive balanced work and career life.

In relation to our content and slide preparation, the feedback as well revealed that we had beautiful
slides and easy to follow and well presented graphical representation. Despite the positive feedback on
our slide design and presentation, we would continue to work as a team towards achieving more
positive results and positive feedback from our various tasks collectively. In the area of our delivery and
overall communication, the feedback reflected both positive and negative outcome. However, as stated
earlier, we would work collectively in the area of our communication and social skills, and to ensure that
we work as a team in order to have a proper layout and plan for our presentation and any other group
activities. According to Obamiro (2011), the following are some of the importance of effective
communication among individuals, which are: attain coordinated action; communicate feelings and
emotion; share information in relations to educational goals, task directions, results of efforts and
decision making; accomplish effective control; and to motivate and allow for individual participation in
decision making. With the above stated, importance of effective communication, as a team, we shall
work to ensure that we develop good communication and social skills among ourselves, in order to
achieve our academic goals.
Lastly, based on all of the feedback examined, it can be concluded that as team we must always work
together towards achieved a shared goal, in the case academic goals. The ability of individuals in a group
to work collectively will bring about oneness in decision making towards task accomplishment.

1.8. CONCLUSION

This study examined ghost writing service utilization among international students. The significance of
this study is to find out the factors contributing to students hiring of ghost writers and the impact of this
on the students’ academic performance. Ghost writer is an individual considered to be a freelance
writer who writes articles, speeches, books, etc that is credited to someone else, and is not credited for
that work. That is, the credit of the work goes to the client or individual that hired the ghostwriter. In
the course of carrying out this study, there were a number of challenges or limitations encountered,
among which are: disagreement on the part of the group members arising from diverse perspectives to
the study process, financial constraints, inadequate information in relation to the topic and lack of
willingness among the respondents to attempt the questions formulated to address the issues on
ghostwriting.

The issue of plagiarism and ghost writing has existed for over a decade now. Today, the alarming rate of
ghost writing and students’ academic performance is a concern which necessitates this research. From
the findings, it was observed the most of the respondents would consider the service of ghostwriter to
be unethical, while the result further showed that most of the students have not hired a ghost writer.
Thus, going by the results from the study, it can be said that most of the students are quite aware of
what ghostwriting implies and still they are not willing to hire them for their course work and research
tasks. Therefore, it is important for the University authority to ensure compliance to their ethical code
on plagiarism and to ensure that student caught in the process of ghostwriting and plagiarisms are
penalized accordingly. Thus, this will reduce the rate at which students will engage the services of
ghostwriters and to enable them become more independent in their research work and thus enhance
their individual academic performance and research skills.

In addition, in order to improve project of ethical behaviour, it is important for students to follow
informed-consent rules. This ensures that students or individuals are voluntarily partaking in the
research with full knowledge of relevant risks and benefits attached to it. A researcher conducting a
research must ensure that the necessary codes of conducts are followed such as the issue of anonymity
and confidentiality, as well as the risks and benefits involved. In addition, a consent form must be
presented by the researcher to the participants to ensure their willingness to participate in the research.
This will allow a researcher stay in line with the ethical code of conduct while carrying out a research.

In a bid to curtail the effect of ghostwriting service, it is suggested that school authorities and lecturers
in particular must do away with traditional essays, that is, to stop the use of personal written
assignments and replace them with group assessments methods. In addition, there is the need for
students and lecturers partnership, this is because the availability of a lecturer in given necessary
assistance, support, adjustment or reconstruction of a student arguments, will to a great extent create a
level of relationship between student and lecturer, and thus discourage a student from seeking the
assistance of a ghost writer. Besides that, another method is to ensure that students constantly give a
mini presentation of what they have done in their research. This will enable a student to remain
committed and highly involved in the entire research process.

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Dallimore, E., & Mickel, A. (2013). Quality of life: Obstacles, advice, and employer assistance. Human
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Obamiro, J.K. (2011). Management Principles & Strategies, Lagos: Pumak Nigeria Limited.

The Higher Education Standards Panel (HESP). 2021. Tackling contract cheating. [online] Available at:
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[Accessed 17 January 2022].
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