Impact of Group Counseling with Cognitive Restructuring Techniques to Reduce Cheating and Increase Self Efficacy

Article Info ________________ History Articles Received: 9 January 2021 Accepted: 28 February2021 Published: 30 April 2021 ________________


INTRODUCTION
Academic dishonesty is one of educational issues which comes along with learning process and exists at any educational level. Insecurity that emerges during exams and desire to increase achievement somehow make cheating as the best alternative to it. Bintoro (2013) says that academic dishonesty is realized in dishonest during exams and takes nothing for granted whether it is adverse or not.
According to Aulia (2015) academic dishonesty is noticed in acts like cheating and plagiarism such as giving or getting illegal answers during exams or assignment. One's right or wrong action depends on his own perspective on an object. Baron & Branscombe (2012) state that one's attitude is obtained from others through social learning process.
Attitude according to Munthofiah (2008) is a feeling of support or contradiction towards an object. Further, Putri (2012) explains attitude as one's response in affection, cognition, and conation on an object or aspect in surrounding environment either favorable one or unfavorable one. This attitude of support surely can cause positive and negative actions depending on one's judgement on the object. Raman (2016) argues that attitude can influence one's behavior, especially actions and decisions. An action performed by an individual is a manifestation of a determined attitude, so the right or wrong in one's action depends on the object he sees. In contrary, Baron & Branscombe (2012) consider attitudes towards a particular group, problem, or object do not always reflect one's behavior, but are a matter of situational constraints and norms that affect willingness to express true attitudes. Wahyudiati (2015) defines cheating as a dishonest act practiced in the world of education, including imitating other's writing or work dishonestly through acts or manners aiming at getting the best score in exams.
According to AL-Dossary (2017), if a student has a positive belief towards cheating, he will form positive attitudes towards it. This belief is influenced by family, friends, and teachers. Kustiwi (2014) in her study found that cheating or plagiarism is mostly dominated by teacher's role with the percentage of 54.4%.
Several studies evidence have proved that academic dishonesty happens from school to college. McCabe (in Finn and Frone, 2015) who conducted a national survey of high school students found that 74% of students admit cheating during exams and 72% of them did it when doing assignment. Then, Maramark & Maline (in Batool, Abbas, and Naeemi, 2011) have conducted a survey in some campus in America and found some percentages of cheating, namely 15% to 20% with the highest of 81%. Of all previous studies, it is assumed that dishonesty level is sort of high at both the school and university levels.
The findings of preliminary study at SMA Muhammadiyah 5 Yogyakarta indicated that students' attitude towards cheating is high. The low self-efficacy realized in students' insecurity to believe their own ability and desire to get high scores motivate them to cheat during exams and assignment.
The aforementioned description marks the need for treating students who have positive attitudes towards cheating to improve selfefficacy. Allport (Uzum, Karli and Yildiz, 2018) describes attitude as a cognitive and affective state that directs individual behavior or exerts dynamic influence in responding to certain situations or objects as a result of their experiences and the events they have gone through.
Furthermore, Alwisol (2004) thinks that self-efficacy is the perception of how well oneself can function in particular situations. It is related to a belief that someone has the expected ability. Self-efficacy can also be defined as selfassessment, whether one is able to perform an action and fulfil tasks based on the requirements. This thing is different from aspiration (dreams) because aspiration sets out ideals things to achieve, while self-efficacy gives an overview of one's ability.
In a theory of self-efficacy, it is stated that the level and strength of self-efficacy will determine: (1) whether an action will be performed, (2) efforts spent, (3) length of efforts to face challenges. This theory is unrelated to individual skills, but rather skills-related decisions (Mukhid, 2009). When individuals have strong feelings in self-efficacy, they will do greater struggle to accomplish tasks and neglect any obstacles they have compared to those who have low self-efficacy. Thus, cheating and low self-efficacy can be handled by a counseling treatment using cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) approach to improve the distorted thoughts. Specifically, the technique to use along with that approach is Cognitive Restructuring (CR) technique.
Cognitive Restructuring (CR) is a technique which gives assists through the strength of positive and logical thoughts. Nugroho and Pratiwi (2016) argue that this cognitive restructuring model makes use of assumptions that any behavioral and emotional disorders or problems are shaped by the client's incorrect beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions. This strategy can help clients understand the reciprocal relationship between perception / cognition appropriately. Cristi and Muhari (2013) say that the use of cognitive restructuring strategies can increase self-efficacy.
This study aims to determine the effectiveness of cognitive restructuring techniques in reducing students' attitudes towards cheating and increasing self-efficacy. Based on the theory above, the hypothesis in this study is "There is an influence between low selfefficacy on cheating attitudes and effective cognitive restructuring techniques in reducing cheating attitudes and increasing student selfefficacy. The higher the efficiency, the lower the cheating"

METHODS
In carrying out the study, the researchers employed randomized pretest-posttest group design by involving two groups, namely experimental group that was treated using cognitive restructuring technique (in 5 meetings) and control group with conventional method (four meetings). There were 123 students of the ninth grade of SMA Muhammadiyah 5 Yogyakarta involved in this study. Purposive sampling was applied and resulted 14 students who had high cheating level. To determine the group, whether experimental or control, the researchers performed random assignment to those students. Random assignment also played a role to distribute the students in an equal way. After that, it got seven students to be placed in each group. For more, the procedures of this study are presented in the following figure 1. Toward Cheating (ATC) instrument was the instrument to collect the data in this study. It was adapted from Gardner & Melvin (1998) and consists of 34 items covering 6 indicators, namely beliefs in ability, distraction of attention, social factors, time management, personal initiation, and laziness.
In that measurement tool, the researchers performed equivalence through back-translation process, expert validity, and instrument testing. It resulted that all items were valid (rxy = 0.306-0.545) with an alpha coefficient of 0.815. Following the data collection, Wilcoxon and mann whitney tests were conducted.

Data Analysis Technique
In this study, data analysis was aimed at explaining the indirect effects of cognitive restructuring technique to reduce students' Postest positive attitudes towards cheating through the improvement of self-efficacy. It covered multivariate analysis or a method to process various variables which are predicted to have a relationship one another with at least there are one dependent variable and two independent variables. The results of this analysis can be seen in the following table 1.  Table one displays the values of mean and standard deviation of both independent and dependent variables. In experimental class, the cheating attitudes obtained the mean value of M = 62.14 and the standard deviation value of SD = 7.88; while for self-efficacy, the mean value of M = 17.57 and standard deviation value of SD = 2.69. In the control group, academic cheating had the mean value of M = 77.57 and the standard deviation of SD = 12.14; while for selfefficacy the mean value was M = 22.00 and the standard deviation value was SD = 3.46.
Once the descriptive data were obtained, the researchers performed MANOVA test. This test examines whether the mean vectors of two or more sample groups are taken from the same distribution sample. MANOVA is commonly used in two main conditions. The first condition is when there are several correlated dependent variables, while the researcher only wants one total test on this set of variables to be compared to several individual tests. The second condition is when the researcher wants to know how the independent variable affects the pattern of the dependent variable. In this analysis the objective was to examine the results of the change in scores between the pretest and posttest in each treatment group. The calculations were then assisted by the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 program.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Students' self-efficacy level after getting the group counseling with cognitive restructuring technique got improved seen from the score, while their cheating attitudes got reduced. Score changes were known from the comparison between pretest and posttest scores. To measure this variable, initially the researchers gave Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and Attitude Towards Cheating (ATC).
Changes in the experimental group were realized after they have got the group counseling with cognitive restructuring technique. In details, prior to the treatment the members' self-efficacy was low and their cheating attitudes were high. After the treatment, the conditions were converse, namely in terms of cheating attitudes, 6 students turned to low and 1 student turned to fair and in terms of self-efficacy, all seven students turned to high.
Similar to the experimental group, the control group also experienced betterment. After the conventional counseling was given, the members' cheating attitudes declined. In details, 4 students declined to low category and 3 students declined to fair category. Meanwhile, it was found 2 students got their self-efficacy improved to fair category and the rest five were high.
From the distribution and analysis of the scale, there were score changes in the experimental and control groups in which the experimental group achieved better improvement in self-efficacy than the control group.
MANOVA test was used to examine the decrease in cheating attitudes and increase in self-efficacy. In this study, the MANOVA test yielded the following results: The above table also showed that the experimental group which received counseling restructuring to reduce cheating attitudes experienced a significant change of (M = 62.14, Sd = 7.88) and a decrease in self-efficacy with results (M = 17.57, Sd = 2.96). Besides, in the resilience control group there found a decrease in cheating attitudes (M = 77.57, Sd = 12.14) and an increase in self-efficacy (M = 22.00, Sd = 3.46).
From the results, it was noticed that the group counseling was effective to decrease cheating attitudes and increase self-efficacy of students, while in terms of differences, the experimental group achieved more significant results than the control group.
The high belief in one's abilities would facilitate an individual to be more courageous to explore himself. In the same way, high selfefficacy can control any negative behavior in accomplishing tasks so that academic achievement can be easily achieved (Purwati and Akmaliyah, 2016). Of this theory, selfefficacy is assumed to have pretty strong influence on one's attitude which later takes part in the behavior being practiced. Therefore, there is a need for a follow-up so that the future attitudes will not cause bad behavior with inappropriate actions. Melyana, Rusdarti and Pujiati (2015) in their study found self-efficacy can mediate the influence of attitudes and knowledge on students' readiness in executing their plans. It is further explained that high self-efficacy can encourage students to be more courageous in acting. Likewise, a student will achieve optimum learning outcomes if he is interested in a particular subject. Hidayat &Sariningsih (Hendriana & Kadarisma, 2019) consider a belief in abilities is a positive attitude which can motivate optimum learning outcomes. This optimistic attitude will bring students to success and inspire them to be more confident in potency they have.
Gunawan (2012, Artani, 2017) conclude low academic self-efficacy would trigger dishonesty in utilizing information technology to cheat. In contrary, high academic self-efficacy would decrease the tendency of cheating through information technology. Nora & Zhang (2010) emphasize the belief in selfefficacy since it is one of determining factor of cheating. Additionally, teachers should also build and strengthen students' beliefs so that students' efficacy would gain more increase.
Bates (Fida, 2018) considers observation as a means of controlling students' behavior in accordance with standards and norms and directing them to not involve in cheating. Thereby, it can examine the extent to which cheating happens in school and in turn can emphasize that cheating is a forbidden behavior. Regarding this explanation, self-efficacy is known to have a relationship with cheating evidence by the results of questionnaire data analysis and findings of the previous studies, namely students with low self-efficacy tend to have low confidence in their abilities and are easily influenced by situations that enable them to cheat during exams. Getting high score causes students perceive cheating as a positive attitude. As a result, they neglect, degrade their own abilities, and unconsciously lower self-efficacy. Low self-efficacy needs to be handled immediately to improve students' quality and reduce cheating attitudes, especially by the students in SMA Muhammadiyah 5 Yogyakarta. A possible way offered by this study is by using CBT with cognitive restructuring technique. Fetzner, Peluso & Asmundson (2014, Hikmah, 2020, claim CBT group counseling can increase control beliefs ability by restructuring thoughts back to more positive thinking (positive cognitive restructuring), broadening the perspective (enhanced restructuring), trying to understand the best possible (dependent understandings), determining the action to be taken (device action), and achieving emotional support (emotional support).
The above theories are in line with the findings of this study that cognitive restructuring technique could reduce cheating proved by the analysis results and interviews. Changes in students' cheating attitude were motivated by the negative views made by the process of restructuring. Since they realized that this behavior was not right, they started to improve their own abilities. The effectiveness of this technique is admitted by Bakhtiar and Kasim (2017) that the implementation of cognitive restructuring technique can significantly reduce academic procrastination of students in SMPN 8 Maassar. Procrastination is an act of delaying realized by the feelings of inferior, cursing, guilty, cheated, tension, panic and anxiety. One of the causes of cheating is the frequent procrastination of work.
This study has been successfully investigated the effectiveness of the group counseling with cognitive restructuring technique on self-efficacy to reduce cheating attitudes of SMA Muhammadiyah 5 Yogyakarta students. However, there were some limitations in it such as the absence of follow-up plans to monitor the duration of intervention effects and unavailability of the discussion of mediators variable influencing cheating attitudes, such as intention and learning achievement by which these variables have an important role in students' cheating attitude. In addition to mediators, there were still many left undiscussed, for example such as factors affecting self-efficacy and students' attitudes towards cheating. If further discussed, the underlying background of students' cheating attitudes would be discovered and enrich the future studies.

CONCLUSION
In accordance with the data analysis obtained from the investigation to students of SMA Muhammadiyah 5 Yogyakarta from the beginning up to the implementation of the group counseling with the choosen technique, several conclusions are drawn and presented in the following.
There are some ninth-grade students of SMA Muhammadiyah 5 Yogyakarta who have low self-efficacy and positive attitudes towards cheating. After the treatment of the group counseling with cognitive restructuring technique, it is known that this service is able to reduce cheating attitudes directly and within the increase of self-efficacy as the moderator. Additionally, this counseling is effective to improve low self-efficacy of struggling students. Further, there is a slightly significant relationship between low self-efficacy on high positive attitudes of cheating.
Following the findings, there is a need for planning follow-up and building closeness to students who have problems related to the technique used and monitor the length of interventions effect in improving self-efficacy and reducing cheating attitudes. Furthermore, in the discussion it is known that there are many mediating variables that reduce self-efficacy and trigger students' positive attitudes towards cheating. Therefore, the future studies are expected to add mediating variables such as intention and learning achievement.