Investigate the theory of deterrence, understand the differences between specific and general strategies, and explore the ways you can incorporate the components of severity, certainty, and celerity into your deterrence program.
LegalDictionary.net defines deterrence as “the act of discouraging people from engaging in wrongful behavior”. However, I prefer Dictionary.com’s definition, as it goes a bit further and defines deterrence as “the act of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences”.Let’s take a closer look at the pieces of this last definition:
Discouraging an action or event
For our purposes in test security, the primary actions we seek to discourage are cheating (where one seeks to artificially inflate HIS/HER test score) and item theft (where one steals items so that OTHERS may have their test scores artificially inflated). While innumerable methods exist to attempt these actions, they fall into 12 “buckets” of test security threats for which deterrence may be implemented (see http://bit.ly/CaveonRiskAssessment).
Instilling Doubt
Per the definition, we want to “instill doubt”. This is a fundamental concept, as so much of the test security effort we extoll focuses on causing test takers to wonder, “can I really get away with this?” Video cameras, proctors, authentication, etc. have all been implemented to germinate those concerns in testers who might otherwise be tempted to break the rules.
Fear of the Consequences
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