Attitudes towards Plagiarism Scale: Development and Initial Validation

Author(s):

Merve Zayim(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

09. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement

Format:

Paper

Session Information

09 SES 01 B, Assessment in Higher Education (I)

Parallel Paper Session

Time:

2012-09-18

13:15-14:45

Room:

FCT - Aula 15

Chair:

Martin Goy

Contribution

Plagiarism in higher education has gaining the attention of many scholars as being one of the most potential threats for academic integrity. It is defined as introducing other people’s words and creative products as our own (Nealy, 2011). Plagiarism in higher education emerges on various forms which indicate the necessity of addressing the reasons driving people for plagiarism. Owunwanne, Rustagi, and Dada (2010) suggested the reasons of student plagiarism in higher education as the extensive pressure on students to have good transcripts, widespread technology usage, and accessibility of free knowledge on the net. Moreover, Erkaya (2009) in his study investigated the causes of plagiarism among Turkish high school and graduate students and identified these causes as students’ lack of awareness and knowledge about writing a research paper, motivation for conducting research, and instructors’ unsupportive attitudes towards their writings.

The increase in the prevalence of plagiarism in higher education (Larkham & Manns, 2002) signifies the necessity to take measures for dealing with the ever-growing problem of academia. However, the first step should be the investigation of the current situation and appropriately assessing students’ attitudes toward plagiarism. Despite excessive number of studies conducted on this issue, the literature both in the world and in Turkey is limited regarding sound measures for assessing plagiarism. Indeed, the field is dominated with conceptual papers written with the aim of creating broad understanding of the issue (DeVoss & Rosati, 2002; Dyrud, 2011; Elbeck, 2009; Hall, 2011; Heather, 2010; Jameson, 2011; Kock & Davison, 2003). Also, various studies on plagiarism were conducted through qualitative research methodologies to investigate students’ perceptions at different educational levels regarding plagiarism and plagiarism related issues (Erkaya, 2009; Flint, Clegg, & Macdonald, 2006; Gullifer & Tyson, 2010; Pecorari, 2003; Power, 2009). However, the number of quantitative studies is limited and majorly concentrates on the relationship between participants’ demographics’ and frequency of plagiarism such as gender (Comas-Forgas & Sureda-Negre, 2010; Davis, Grover, Becker, & McGregor, 1992; Selwyn, 2008; Smyth & Davis, 2004), grade level of students (Selwyn, 2008; Lin and Wen, 2007; Walker, 2010), students’ GPA (Alam, 2004; Roig & Caso, 2005). Further, the scales developed in the field were generally gauge the prevalence of plagiarism and to display the characteristics of the individuals who plagiarize most and the context in which plagiarism occur (Lin & Wen, 2007; Owunwanne et al., 2010; Pickard, 2006; Selwyn, 2008). When it comes to attitudinal scales, the literature indicates the presence of some measures which gauge attitudes toward plagiarism (Eminoglu & Nartgun, 2009; Eret & Gokmenoglu, 2010; Mavrinac, Brumini, Bilic-Zulle, & Petrovecki, 2010; Pittam, Elander, Lusher, Fox, & Payne, 2009) although there are very few in number and they suffer from psychometric properties and content-context related issues.

To conclude, the literature signifies the lack of a valid and reliable scale measuring attitudes toward plagiarism of graduate and undergraduate students in Turkey. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explicate the development of Attitudes toward Plagiarism scale and provide initial validity evidences.

Method

For the purpose of this study, the items were generated by considering the tripartite structure of attitudes suggested by Breckler (1984), namely; affect, behavior, and cognition. Considering the related literature, the initial item pool was created with 77 items for three domains. However, with the feedbacks taken from two experts, the number reduced to 28 by eliminating redundant, duplicated, and poorly constructed ones. For content validity, the items were assessed by five area experts in terms of their clarity, appropriateness for the target group and intended domains. With the feedback taken and subsequent cognitive interviews conducted with an undergraduate and two graduate students, the final draft of the scale acquired which comprised of 24 items. A convenient sample of 148 graduate and undergraduate students from a public university in Ankara, Turkey participated in the pilot study. Majority of the participants were undergraduate students (N=109) and the mean age was 21.79. They were asked to indicate their level of agreement through five point likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The data gathered were subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis and internal consistencies for the sub-scales were calculated. Also, MANOVA was conducted with some demographics for further construct validity evidence.

Expected Outcomes

EFA was conducted to determine the underlying factor structure of the scale with principal axis factoring and direct oblimin methods. Eigenvalues and explained variance suggested seven-factor solution although although scree-plot and the proposed structure for attitudes pointed out three factors. However, seven-factor solution was problematic in terms of item loadings and number of items loaded on the factors. Therefore, three-factor solution was forced as an alternative. After eliminating four items with the loadings lower than .30 (Hair, Black, Babain, Anderson, & Tatham, 2006), this new solution explained 47.85% of total variance. The first dimension labeled as attitudes towards admissible acts of plagiarism (nine items); second dimension named as affective attitudes toward plagiarism (seven items) and final one labeled as underestimating attitudes towards severity of plagiarism (four items). The Cronbach’s alpha values for three dimensions are .82, .82 and .60 respectively. Finally, MANOVA was conducted to test whether the scale discriminate between males and females as suggested in the literature for further validity evidence. The results revealed a significant main effect of gender on three dimensions (F(3,116)=3.44, p<.05) and significant effect on the second dimension of the scale (F(1,118)=8.44, p<.05). Therefore, the scale needs further validation studies.

References

Breckler, S. J. (1984). Empirical validation of affect, behavior, and cognition as districts components of attitude. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47(6), 1191-1205. Eminoglu, E., & Nartgun, Z. (2009). A scale development study to measure academic dishonesty tendency of university students. International Journal of Human Sciences, 6(1), 215-240. Eret, E., & Gokmenoglu, T. (2010). Plagiarism in higher education: a case study with prospective academicians. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2, 3303-3307. Erkaya, O. R. (2009). Plagiarism by Turkish students: causes and solutions. Asian EFL Journal, 11(2), 86-103. Hair, J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., Anderson, R.E., & Tatham, R.L. (2006). Multivariate data analysis (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Lin, C. H. S., & Wen, L. Y. M. (2007). Academic dishonesty in higher education-a nationwide study in Taiwan. Higher Education, 54, 85-97. Mavrinac, M, Brumini, G, Bilic-Zulle, L., & Petrovecki, M. (2010). Construction and validation of attitudes toward plagiarism questionnaire. Croatian Medical Journal, 51, 195-201. Nealy, C. (2011). Rethinking plagiarism. Business Communication Quarterly, 74(2), 205-209. Owunwanne, D., Rustagi, N., & Dada, R. (2010). Students’ perceptions of cheating and plagiarism in higher institutions. Journal of College Teaching and Learning, 7(11), 59-68. Pittam, G., Elander, J. Lusher, J., Foz, P., & Payne, N. (2009). Student beliefs and attitudes about authorial identity in academic writing. Studies in Higher Education, 34(2), 153-170. Selwyn, N. (2008). ‘Not necessariliy a bad thing …’: a study of online plagiarism amongst undergraduate students. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(5), 465-479

Author Information

Merve Zayim (presenting / submitting)

Middle East Technical University

Educational Administration and Planning

Ankara

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