Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Jun 18:3:e1031.
doi: 10.7717/peerj.1031. eCollection 2015.

Exploring the attitudes of medical faculty members and students in Pakistan towards plagiarism: a cross sectional survey

Farooq Azam Rathore  1 , Ahmed Waqas  2 , Ahmad Marjan Zia  2 , Martina Mavrinac  3 , Fareeha Farooq  4
Affiliations

Exploring the attitudes of medical faculty members and students in Pakistan towards plagiarism: a cross sectional survey

Farooq Azam Rathore et al. PeerJ. .

Abstract

Objective. The objective of this survey was to explore the attitudes towards plagiarism of faculty members and medical students in Pakistan. Methods. The Attitudes Toward Plagiarism questionnaire (ATP) was modified and distributed among 550 medical students and 130 faculty members in 7 medical colleges of Lahore and Rawalpindi. Data was entered in the SPSS v.20 and descriptive statistics were analyzed. The questionnaire was validated by principal axis factoring analysis. Results. Response rate was 93% and 73%, respectively. Principal axis factoring analysis confirmed one factor structure of ATP in the present sample. It had an acceptable Cronbach's alpha value of 0.73. There were 421 medical students (218 (52%) female, 46% 3rd year MBBS students, mean age of 20.93 ± 1.4 years) and 95 faculty members (54.7% female, mean age 34.5 ± 8.9 years). One fifth of the students (19.7%) trained in medical writing (19.7%), research ethics (25.2%) or were currently involved in medical writing (17.6%). Most of the faculty members were demonstrators (66) or assistant professors (20) with work experience between 1 and 10 years. Most of them had trained in medical writing (68), research ethics (64) and were currently involved in medical writing (64). Medical students and faculty members had a mean score of 43.21 (7.1) and 48.4 (5.9) respectively on ATP. Most of the respondents did not consider that they worked in a plagiarism free environment and reported that self-plagiarism should not be punishable in the same way as plagiarism. Opinion regarding leniency in punishment of younger researchers who were just learning medical writing was divided. Conclusions. The general attitudes of Pakistani medical faculty members and medical students as assessed by ATP were positive. We propose training in medical writing and research ethics as part of the under and post graduate medical curriculum.

Keywords: Attitudes; Ethics; Medical education; Medical writing; Pakistan; Plagiarism; Scientific writing.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there are no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Scree plot for the obtained one factor structure.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Ajzen I. The theory of planned behavior. Orgnizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. 1991;50:179–211. doi: 10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T. - DOI
    1. Anderson MS, Horn AS, Risbey KR, Ronning EA, De Vries R, Martinson BC. What do mentoring and training in the responsible conduct of research have to do with scientists’ misbehavior? Findings from a National Survey of NIH-funded scientists. Academic Medicine. 2007;82(9):853–860. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e31812f764c. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Badea-Voiculescu O. Attitude of Romanian medicine students towards plagiarism. Romanian Journal of Morphology and Embryology. 2013;54(3 Supplement):907–908. - PubMed
    1. Baždarić K, Bilić-Zulle L, Brumini G, Petrovečki M. Prevalence of plagiarism in recent submissions to the Croatian medical journal. Science and Engineering Ethics. 2012;18(2):223–239. doi: 10.1007/s11948-011-9347-2. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ghajarzadeh M, Hassanpour K, Fereshtehnejad SM, Jamali A, Nedjat S, Aramesh K. Attitude towards plagiarism among Iranian medical students. Abstract 249Journal of Medical Ethics. 2013;39(4) doi: 10.1136/medethics-2012-100560. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources