Students admit to fewer instances of plagiarism than most students believe actually occur, according to a new study on plagiarism that is scheduled for publication in the Journal of College Student Development at the end of this school year.
The survey was designed to reveal the amount of plagiarism in which the respondents and their peers engaged. Conducted by Robert M. Scanlon and David R. Neumann, communications professors at the Rochester Institute of Technology, the study polled 698 undergraduates attending nine colleges and universities.
The results indicate that 16.5 percent of the survey participants admit to sometimes committing plagiarism from books or other printed sources. However, of those that confess their activities, 50.4 percent of students said their peers "often" or "very frequently" cut and paste text into a paper without adhering to required citation standards.
Thus, the perceptions and actual practice of plagiarism do not correspond.
Since last April when Physics Prof. Louis Bloomfield initiated honor charges against 122 students, the issue of plagiarism surfaced within the University. Bloomfield developed a computer program that detected similar words or consecutive phrases in students' papers. As of this past November, he had levied 34 additional charges against students, bringing the total to 156.
First-year College student Thomson Silvers, who took one of Bloomfield's classes, said he believes that people are much more conscientious about citing sources now than they were before the Bloomfield ordeal.
"Everyone who sees [Bloomfield's] name thinks about the honor code now," Silvers said. "They think about cheating, and that makes a huge difference when they write their papers."
The study for the Journal of College Student Development also focused on Internet plagiarism.
The results revealed that 24.5 percent of students said they "often," "very frequently" or "sometimes" take material from the Internet and use it as their own without citing the proper and relevant sources. Yet more than 90 percent of those polled said their peers had committed plagiarism from Internet sources.
"The results of the study don't surprise me," first-year College student Zulay Lidster said. "Personally, I don't know of anyone that cheats, but it doesn't surprise me that people believe their peers cheat"
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