External validity of a laboratory measure of cheating: Evidence from Czech juvenile detention centers
Abstract
Evidence of external validity of laboratory measures of the propensity to cheat is scarce. We conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment with 303 youths incarcerated in juvenile detention centers in the Czech Republic to study whether a laboratory measure of cheating correlates with their field behavior.
We combine two complementary field-behavior measures: current (mis-)behavior reported by detention center staff as a short-term individual characteristic, and a sum of the types of delinquent acts (e.g. aggression, truancy, petty crimes) officially recorded as the reasons for their detention as a long-term characteristic. We find that behavior in the laboratory task measuring cheating significantly correlates with both field measures.
Overall, our results suggest that the experimental cheating measure may generalize well into natural environments.