Source Based Essay

University Students' Perceptions of Plagiarism Author(syf / R U L * 3 R Z H r Source: The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 80, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 2009yf S S 2 Published by: Ohio State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27750755 Accessed: 16-02-2017 14:36 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Ohio State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Higher Education This content downloaded from 69.43.66.12 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:36:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Lori G. Power University Students' Perceptions of Plagiarism Students who engage in plagiarism present a prob lem for all educators, especially those at the secondary and post-sec ondary levels. To those teaching at the university level, the ever-increas ing availability of electronic material must certainly be making plagiarism easier for students and may also be contributing to its preva lence. A large body of research has been conducted on cheating behav iors across all disciplines. There has been a significant amount of inquiry at the college level, particularly in the fields of English, Business Man agement, and Psychology. Fewer studies have focused specifically on plagiarism as a separate issue from other cheating behaviors, however. Of the studies that assess trends in plagiarism alone, most utilize self reporting of plagiarism by students (see McCabe, 1999; O'Connor, 2003; Scanlon & Neumann, 2002, and many others for examplesyf $ s we shall see, students have such a confused notion of what actually con stitutes plagiarism that such self-reporting cannot be taken as entirely reliable. To complicate the issue, some studies have found that students tend to under report plagiarism or cheating behavior (Genereux & McLeod, 1995yf Z K L O H R W K H U V V X J J H V W W K D W V W X G H Q W V R Y H U U H S R U W L W % U R Z n & Emmit, 2001; Karlins, Michaels, & Podlager, 1988yf . There is no doubt that plagiarism is a problem at our universities. Why do students do it? Is the number actually increasing? Why are stu dents still apparently confused about the subject, despite all of our ef forts to educate them? Lori G. Power is the Coordinator of the Department of Learning Assistance at the University of New England in Portland, Maine. The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 80, No. 6 (November/December 2009yf Copyright ? 2009 by The Ohio State University This content downloaded from 69.43.66.12 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:36:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 644 The Journal of Higher Education Statement of Purpose The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of some of the ways first- and second-year university students understand the phenom enon of plagiarism. Because the question involves a subjective state of knowing?an exploration of the meaning of these students' experiences as they interpreted them?a qualitative study was the most appropriate choice. It is to be hoped that this study will provide the literature on uni versity plagiarism with a new perspective: one from within the student's own understanding and experience. Research Design A basic interpretive qualitative study on students' perceptions and un derstandings of plagiarism was performed. The study was informed by elements of grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998yf $ J U R X Q G H G W K e ory is "discovered, developed, and provisionally verified through sys tematic data collection and analysis. Therefore, data collection, analysis and theory stand in reciprocal relationship with one another" (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p. 23yf . The elements of grounded theory utilized were primarily its strengths: its systems of coding and data analysis which occur simultaneously with data collection (Strauss & Corbin, 1998yf 7 K H F R G H V D Q G W K H P H V W K D t emerged were inductively derived from the data, and the data was con stantly compared: people, ideas, theories, codes, incidents, and cate gories. Such a close inspection of students' responses to questions about plagiarism certainly uncovered some insights about their perceptions of plagiarism. In many ways the study drew on the tradition of phenomenology as well as on grounded theory?exploring a phenomenon in great depth from the perspective of those who experience and live within it (Mer riam, 2002yf % X W D V $ V K Z R U W K ) U H H Z R R G D Q G 0 F G R Q D O G \f found, interviews about plagiarism would not have been effective if they are left as open as is the case with phenomenological research (Miles & Huberman, 1994yf 3 D U W L F L S D Q W V Q H H G H G V R P H V W U X F W X U H L Q W K H I R U P R f questions to explore their perspectives. In addition, grounded theory's system of coding data was utilized, while the discipline of phenomenol ogy generally uses a less systematic process of analysis (Patton, 2002yf . But the concept of plagiarism is a phenomenological one, and the tradi tion certainly provided some inspiration for my work. This content downloaded from 69.43.66.12 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:36:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms University Students' Perceptions of Plagiarism 645 Sample The participants involved in this study were first- or second-year un dergraduate students at a small university in southern Maine. Freshmen or sophomore university students were targeted for this study for a num ber of reasons. First, all of these students have had some exposure to the concept of writing and plagiarism by their very experience of having completed high school and started on their post-secondary education. They were expected to be "typical cases" as recommended by Miles and Huberman (1994, p. 28yf 6 H F R Q G D F F R U G L Q J W R 6 L P V \f, university students are increasingly less likely to plagiarize as they get closer to graduation. Sims speculates on a number of reasons for this: The stu dents have more invested in their education and therefore have more to lose; they have had more practice at writing with sources; and they have been either socialized or educated to believe that academic dishonesty is unacceptable. Sims also found that the closer a student gets to gradua tion, the more closely aligned his views are with the faculty's. High school students are generally more accepting of cheating behaviors than university students at any level (McCabe & Drinan, 1999yf D Q G W K H F R n sequences may be less severe. Undergraduate university students in their freshman or sophomore year were selected for this study because they are perceived as more likely to engage in plagiarism or to be "tolerant" of it, but for them pla giarism has serious consequences. This particular sample of students' perceptions and understandings of the issue are noticeably absent from the literature. The literature does show that they do not understand the many subtleties of plagiarism (Howard, 1999; Roig, 1999yf E X W L W G R H s not explore in their own words what their understandings are. Therefore I set out to talk with students in both private interviews and focus groups. Data Collection I selected two writing courses for the focus groups. Their professor was not present during the confidential group discussion, and students were allowed to opt out of the focus group if they so chose. I obtained volunteers for the individual interviews by means of campus flyers. Sev eral who contacted me were concerned about what they might be ex pected to say or how the information might be used. When I told the stu dents that I was interested in hearing about the topic of plagiarism from their point of view, and that I would protect their confidentiality, they were quite willing to be interviewed. Once potential participants under stood that their participation would not harm them in any way, and that This content downloaded from 69.43.66.12 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:36:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 646 The Journal of Higher Education they might be helping faculty and others to understand students' percep tions about plagiarism, they were surprisingly willing to talk honestly. Since this institution is situated in southern Maine, a state with very lit tle ethnic diversity, all participants were Caucasian, therefore the subtopic of cultural differences in plagiarism perceptions was not in cluded in this study. I began with a 90-minute-long focus group of five second-semester freshmen in a required freshman writing course (see Appendix for a list of interview questionsyf , W K H Q F R Q G X F W H G S U L Y D W H L Q W H U Y L H Z V H D F h 60-90 minutes in length. Finally, I conducted a second focus group con sisting of 15 students in another section of the required writing course to confirm or disconfirm findings. Thus there were a total of 31 students participating in this study. The focus groups and interviews were audio recorded and later transcribed for coding and analysis. Data Management After the first focus group of five students and the first two individual interviews, all data was transcribed, and preliminary coding began. With grounded theory, transcription, coding, data collection, and data analysis all take place simultaneously (Strauss & Corbin, 1998yf . Data Analysis Data analysis was inductive using open coding, axial coding, and con stant comparison. Like data collection and transcription, coding and analysis were ongoing and continuous (Strauss & Corbin, 1998yf $ W W K L s point some commonalities emerged from the codes, and codes were con solidated into categories and subcategories. In grounded theory, this process is known as axial coding, which is a process of figuring out the relationship between categories and subcategories. Categories are actu ally naming of phenomena (Strauss & Corbinyf . Analysis In terms of interpretation, themes were derived inductively from cate gories, which were themselves derived, again inductively, from codes grounded in the data (Strauss & Corbin, 1998yf 7 K H P H V F D W H J R U L H V D Q d codes were constantly compared to one another. Data analysis began with open coding. Codes were then reduced to categories, which then were reduced to themes. Finally the themes were reduced to two core themes: Agency and Externalization. It must be remembered that the emerging descriptions and themes were "limited to those categories, their properties and dimensions, and statements of relationships that exist[ed] in the actual data collected" This content downloaded from 69.43.66.12 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:36:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms University Students1 Perceptions of Plagiarism 647 (Strauss & Corbin, 1998, p. 112yf $ Q \ U H O D W L R Q V K L S V E H W Z H H Q F R Q F H S W s that were identified were based on thick description and outlined by an audit trail for verification by any interested persons (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000yf 7 K H W K H P H V W K D W H P H U J H G " 3 R Z H U , Q W H O O H F W X D O & D S L W D O ) L Q D n cial Capital, Student Agency, Quest for Agency, Lack of Agency, Exter nalizing, Developmental, Motivations for Plagiarizing, Motivations for Not Plagiarizing , and Misunderstandings/Gray Areas?are all worthy of examination prior to a deeper discussion of the two core themes. Eleven Themes Power was defined as something the professors controlled. If a stu dent felt powerless to control a situation, or felt like a professor could exert a decision that affected the student, including punishment or con sequences of plagiarism or perceived plagiarism, that remark was placed into the Power category. This is an extrinsic category?students felt lit tle agency in these situations. In fact, Student Lack of Agency, another of the themes, can be defined as the opposite of Power. Beth provides typi cal examples of expressing an idea under the Power category when she says: "They scared us into thinking, we're going to jail! We're going to jail!" and "They made you feel like you were stealing all of the time."* Intellectual Capital refers in part to the ownership of material. When ever students referred to some benefit gleaned from a person using an other's idea, or a sense of loss from someone using another's idea, this response was placed under the category of Intellectual Capital. This is different from intellectual property in that it is not just about ownership, but also about either gaining or losing something from the use of that idea. Lance provides an example: But if I were to use your works, use your information, and pass it off as my own, to the audience that I'm passing it off to, it's not yours anymore, it's mine now. Unless someone recognizes that you published that, that you said that, no one knows that it's yours. Financial Capital is similar to Intellectual Capital, but naturally it refers to money in some way, either in the form of compensation for published material or lack of compensation. This theme showed itself surprisingly often in a study intended to look at academic plagiarism, and so is worthy of note. The next three themes are related to one another and need to be treated together. They are all about students' sense of agency. Agency can be defined as a feeling of power or ability to influence a situation. Students often identified a sense of a lack of agency when they were dis cussing their perceptions of plagiarism. For example, Beth said, "I was This content downloaded from 69.43.66.12 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:36:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 648 The Journal of Higher Education just always worried. It wasn't that I was doing it. It was just that I was anxious. I was worried that I wasn't doing it right. And they just, they make such a big deal about the style and the format." In another way, Mike reported a lack of agency when he said, "I was bitter. Um, I re sented the fact that he was making us do a paper that required no think ing whatsoever." Students were coded as having Student Agency when they made deci sions for themselves, even when those decisions led to what would gener ally be considered negative choices, such as plagiarism. If a student delib erately decided to plagiarize, or chose not to read the student handbook's plagiarism policy, those actions were defined as student agency, just as would a comment about supporting a point or writing an excellent paper. Therefore Student Agency can be defined as a student taking control of the situation, feeling a sense of power, and making decisions for him/herself. Students' comments on actions were labeled Quest for Agency when they were attempting to gain some power over a situation for themselves but as yet had failed to achieve agency. For example, Jake spoke of a sit uation in which he was accused of plagiarism (in his mind, unjustlyyf : I mean, I explained to him that I didn't do it on purpose. But it was com pletely accidental. I told him that. I told him that I didn't read that part of the paper. I don't sit down and read the entire article or something. Because even if I did, I wouldn't remember it word for word. For a little bit he gave me some crap for it, but he eventually backed off. I mean it was accidental. It didn't change my behavior because it was an accident. Table 1 provides some visual examples of items at different points along the continuum of agency. It should be noted here that all of the themes described thus far, Power, Intellectual and Financial Capital, and Student Agency, Lack of Agency and Quest for Agency are all about power. Let us remember that we are talking about students' perceptions of plagiarism. Thus the major core theme emerging from these first five themes is power and who has it when it comes to plagiarism. TABLE 1 Sample Items along the Continuum of Agency Lack of agency Quest for agency Agency given "busywork" trying to word things making points unjustly accused of differently understanding sources deliberate plagiarism being allowed to thinking for self think/decide for self This content downloaded from 69.43.66.12 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:36:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms University Students' Perceptions of Plagiarism 649 The next theme that emerged from the data is students' sense of dis tance from the topic they were discussing: Externalizing. A remark was placed into the Externalizing theme if it seemed to be completely sepa rate from the student himself. Accounts of other students who have pla giarized, remarks professors have made, and other events outside of the student's own experience that were considered extrinsic to the student's self were placed into the Externalizing theme, including things they were told by professors about plagiarism, but that had no apparent con nection to themselves. Gina provides a brief example: "The way I have been taught it is, because you're taking somebody else's words." Here it is about what she has been told, not how she understands it. The theme Developmental did not appear in the students' remarks nearly as often as the others, but it did appear on occasion. For example, Beth said, .. so I think plagiarism, some people are confused by it, but I think it's just because, a lot of it is reasoning, and a lot is just develop ing that state of mind when you can physically grasp and comprehend what it is." Unlike some of the other themes, which were derived in vivo, meaning in the students' own works, the theme Developmental was noted in some of the students' perceptions, even though they themselves did not identify it. For example, "That's tough for me. I like everything black and white. I don't want grays ... I just want one way" (Amyyf 6 o in other words, an item was placed into the Developmental theme if stu dents said something about maturity being important to understanding intellectual property, either in the positive sense as in Beth's example, or negatively, as in Amy's example, when someone was deemed not devel opmentally ready to understand the complexity of the issue. The next two themes can be treated together: Motivation for Plagia rizing and Motivation for Not Plagiarizing. Here students gave their rea sons for the choices that they make while writing. The following con cepts provide a sampling of the reasons students gave for their decision to plagiarize: It is easy to do; they are confident they won't get caught; laziness (usually attributed to othersyf W K H U H L V Q R Y L F W L P D Q D V V L J Q P H Q t is deemed busywork; they don't like or don't understand the class or topic; they feel pressured for grades; they procrastinate; they don't know how to avoid it; they are unaware that they are plagiarizing; they have a sense that plagiarism in school is more acceptable than in the real world; they lack the ability to rephrase; and finally, they feel the professor didn't give enough time to complete the assignment. Similarly, there are a number of reasons students provided for their decision not to plagiarize: they fear getting caught; it is easier to actu ally do the assignment; they respect the professor; they enjoy writing papers; they feel guilty if they plagiarize; they can't afford to buy a This content downloaded from 69.43.66.12 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:36:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 650 The Journal of Higher Education paper; the papers online are not specific enough to the topic; and they have a sense of morality. The concept of fear is worthy of a quick men tion. Thirty of the 31 students questioned identified fear of being caught as a primary reason to avoid plagiarism. Interestingly, three stu dents (all young menyf V W D W H G W K D W W K H \ G L G I H D U E H L Q J F D X J K W E X W W K H y plagiarized at times anyway. Only one student cited morality and two cited guilt as reasons not to plagiarize, but all three of those students first named fear as a reason. The two themes Motivation for Plagiarizing and Motivation for Not Plagiarizing, while important, quickly became subsumed as a dimen sion of one of the core themes, Agency. They are worthy of examination, however, on their own merits. These are the questions that educators at all levels are most interested in: why do their students plagiarize? It should be noted that several of the reasons these students cited for choosing either to plagiarize or not to plagiarize have confirmed other findings in the literature (see Alschuler & Blimling, 1995; Crown & Spiller, 1998; Roig & DeTommaso, 1995; Sims, 1995; and Wilhoit, 1994yf . When students voiced an incorrect statement about plagiarism, that statement became part of the theme Misunderstandings/Gray areas. For example, Gina said, "If you read a page and summarize it in your own words, I don't feel that's plagiarism. I mean, that's not copying word for word. If you, you know, use a direct quote, you have to . . . you know, cite it." Sometimes a student was aware of her confusion, and when she voiced it, it also went into this theme, as in this example from Lauren: "I'm not sure which one you have to make reference to the name of the person or the publication that you are citing or you are quoting. It's kind of hard. I'm not sure. I think of them [quoting and cit ing] as interchangeable." In fact, this lack of ability to tell the differ ence between quoting, citing, and paraphrasing became a frequently-re curring phenomenon among the participants. This finding was supported by a separate, impromptu survey of 61 incoming freshmen, most traditionally-aged. They were asked this question: "If you rewrite something you get from a book completely in your own words, do you need to cite that?" They voted by a show of hands (see chart below for resultsyf . The surprising result was that only 14 of the 61 students answered this question correctly. This serves to support the finding that although most students can define plagiarism acceptably, "taking someone else's words or ideas and using them as one's own," they have only a superficial un derstanding of what that means and a therefore a difficult time applying that definition in real situations. This content downloaded from 69.43.66.12 on Thu, 16 Feb 2017 14:36:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms University Students* Perceptions of Plagiarism 651 2 5 -i-: 2o.?immune.-..?. o-,- ?? lo Yes I