Students’ attitudes towards plagiarism and awareness to avoid it

Abstract

Our research aimed to determine the attitudes of students of a major in Accounting at a public university
in southeastern Mexico towards plagiarism, and the main factors that predict it. Our representative
non-probability sample comprised 200 students of Public Accounting. A questionnaire on University Students’ Perception of Plagiarism (USPP) was developed. It was validated by experts and shows acceptable reliability values (a > .70). Its theoretical structure was further confirmed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Our results indicate that 10.5% of the students admitted not giving credit to the original authors when they make their academic assignments, but 41% of the surveyed population acknowledge being aware of the importance of knowing what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. The results of the hierarchical linear regression indicate that awareness to avoid plagiarism is the factor that explains most of the personal attitudes towards it (B = .39, p = .000), followed by the skills to avoid it (B = .33, p = .000) and finally the conditions perceived by the students that allow them to do it (B = .27, p = .000). We concluded that the student's awareness of plagiarism is its main predictor, which reinforces the premise that plagiarism is a matter of ethics and values, both individual and collective.