The tension between impression management and learning: examining the impact of Chinese students’ academic integrity perceptions on self-assessment intentions

Student self-assessment research underscores the significance of honestly recognizing strengths and weaknesses, facilitating self-regulated learning and progress. The Integrated Quality Assessment (IQA) in China combines self-assessment with other data to evaluate achievement, serving dual purposes: promoting students’ awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, and providing summative scores and grades that contribute to the allocation of scholarships and other valued outcomes. This association creates tension in Chinese students’ self-assessment intentions due to the high-stakes consequences. Using a large-scale, cross-sectional survey of 2,063 Chinese undergraduate students, the factors influencing students’ self-assessment intentions were examined. Structural equation modeling revealed that positive perceptions of academic integrity and conceptions of IQA as improvement predicted learning-oriented self-assessment intentions, while increased perceptions of peer misconduct and negative conceptions of IQA significantly predicted impression management intentions.