This 117-page study presents the findings of a survey of 1,140 students from 4-year colleges in the United States about their views on the pervasiveness of plagiarism, the training that they have received to identify and refrain from it, and even if they have been accused of it. The study also presents student views on their own use, and instructor use, of plagiarism detection software and other applications, and views of the fairness and desired use levels of such programs. In addition, the report gives highly detailed data on student views of the use of “paper mills”, of the hiring of fellow students to write papers for other students, and of the copying of non-attributed passages from websites. This study helps colleges to define the dimensions of plagiarism problem and to develop effective means of combatting it.
Data in the report is presented in the aggregate and then broken out separately for sixteen different variables including but not limited to: college grades, gender, income level, year of college standing, SAT/ACT scores, regional origin, age, sexual orientation, race & ethnicity, college major and other personal variables, and by Carnegie class, enrollment size and public/private status of the survey participants institutions of higher education.
Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:
For students over age 30 less than half had heard a librarian explain the concept of plagiarism in a library skills class or session, the lowest percentage of any student age group in the sample.
Students studying engineering, mathematics and related subjects were less likely than other students to say that they understood the concept of plagiarism “very well.”
Students raised abroad were approximately 66% more likely to be accused of plagiarism than students raised in the United States.
22% of students sampled felt that plagiarism detection software and applications were a fundamental way to protect academic integrity and should be used extensively. Also, the more religious the student, the greater the percentage who strongly supported the use of such programs.