Friday, February 1, 2002

Students Plagiarize Less Than Many Think, a New Study Finds By ALEX P. KELLOGG A new study by two professors at the Rochester Institute of Technology concludes that online plagiarism is not nearly as widespread as has frequently been suggested. The study, to be published in the May/June issue of the Journal of College Student Development, draws on a survey of 698 undergraduates at nine colleges and universities, eight in the United States and one in the Middle East. Among other things, the students were asked how much plagiarism they had engaged in -- from books or from online sources -- and the amount of plagiarizing they believed their peers had committed. Patrick M. Scanlon, an associate professor of communications, and David R. Neumann, a professor of communications, wrote a paper reporting the study's findings. The professors found that students think much more plagiarizing is taking place than they actually report doing. While 16.5 percent of students reported having "sometimes" cut and pasted text into a paper without a citation, only 8 percent of students reported having done so "often" or "very frequently." Yet 50.4 percent of students reported that their peers "often" or "very frequently" cut and pasted text from the Internet into their papers without proper citation. The study also found that the amount of online plagiarism students reported engaging in is comparable to the amount of conventional plagiarism -- from books or other printed sources -- that's been reported for years. While 24.5 percent of students reported "often," "very frequently," or "sometimes" having cut and pasted text from the Internet without proper citation, 27.6 percent reported having done the same with conventional texts. Meanwhile, more than 90 percent of students reported that their peers "often," "very frequently," or "sometimes" copied text without citation from conventional sources. The report's authors also conclude that the growth in Internet plagiarism has not necessarily led to an overall increase in the amount of plagiarism taking place. "There's been a lot of media hype over the last couple of years, assuming that the Internet is going to cause a rash of academic dishonesty," says Mr. Scanlon. "While the number of students we found using the Internet to plagiarize is still troubling ... it isn't the epidemic that's been trumpeted. At least, not yet." Mr. Scanlon says he believes the problem is likely to get worse as more and more students reared on the Internet enter college. "There may be more troubling things down the road for us that we need to think about carefully." Donald L. McCabe, a professor of organization management at Rutgers University at Newark, who has done his own studies on Internet plagiarism, says the amount that the new study found seems accurate to him. But he says the picture is changing rapidly. "High-school students who are growing up with the Internet, they're having real difficulty" distinguishing what is and is not plagiarism, he says. "Many of them are developing an attitude that anything on the Internet is public domain, and they're not seeing copying it as cheating." John M. Barrie, the founder and chairman of Turnitin.com, which sells software to detect online plagiarism to thousands of institutions around the globe (including the Rochester Institute of Technology), says the most accurate way to measure student plagiarism is to use software like his, not to distribute surveys. "I don't think that their figures are that off," he says, "What I disagree with is their conclusion that the Internet doesn't significantly contribute to the problem." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Harvard watchdog group calls for inquiry into ties among endowment overseers, Enron, and fund manager Harvard U. to adopt employment panel's wage recommendations Scientists object to White House plan to move Sea Grant program Women gain ground in obtaining community-college presidencies; minorities remain stagnant Illinois Institute of Technology is selling its Research Institute to employees U. of Kentucky football team punished for recruiting violations British Columbia allows community colleges to void union deals Students plagiarize less than many think, a new study finds Engineering accreditors struggle to set standards for online lab sessions