Assessing Male vs. Female Business Student Perceptions of Plagiarism at a Southern Institution of Higher Education

Georgia Educational Researcher, Jul 2016

Plagiarism, cheating, and academic dishonesty affect institutions of higher education. This study examines student perceptions of plagiarism within a Southern, Division-II teaching institution. This study employed a five-point Likert-scale to examine differences of perceptions between male versus female business students. Two statistically significant outcomes were observed between males and females involving the notions that plagiarism is perceived as a necessary evil and that plagiarism is illegal. Respectively, the analyses of the means showed that both male and female respondents tended toward disagreement concerning whether plagiarism is a necessary evil and neutrality regarding whether plagiarism is illegal.

A PDF file should load here. If you do not see its contents the file may be temporarily unavailable at the journal website or you do not have a PDF plug-in installed and enabled in your browser.

Alternatively, you can download the file locally and open with any standalone PDF reader:

https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=gerjournal

Assessing Male vs. Female Business Student Perceptions of Plagiarism at a Southern Institution of Higher Education

Article 1. DOI: 10.20429/ger.2016.130101 Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gerjournal/vol13/iss1/1 Assessing Male vs. Female Business Student Perceptions of Plagiarism at a Southern Institution of Higher Education Daniel Adrian Doss - See next page for additional authors Article 1 Creative Commons License Creative License This quantitative research is available in Georgia Educational Researcher: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gerjournal/ vol13/iss1/1 Daniel Adrian Doss University of West Alabama Russ Henley University of West Alabama Ursula Becker Georgia Military College David McElreath University of Mississippi Hilliard Lackey Jackson State University Don Jones Belhaven University Feng He Mississippi State University Mingyu Li University of West Alabama Shimin Lin University of West Alabama Abstract: Plagiarism, cheating, and academic dishonesty affect institutions of higher education. This study examines student perceptions of plagiarism within a Southern, Division-II teaching institution. This study employed a five-point Likert-scale to examine differences of perceptions between male versus female business students. Two statistically significant outcomes were observed between males and females involving the notions that plagiarism is perceived as a necessary evil and that plagiarism is illegal. Respectively, the analyses of the means showed that both male and female respondents tended toward disagreement concerning whether plagiarism is a necessary evil and neutrality regarding whether plagiarism is illegal. Introduction The host institution for this study is a four-year, regional teaching institution located in the Southeastern U.S. Its service area primarily extended throughout the Black Belt region thereby representing one of the poorest regions within the state (Allen, Henley, & Doss, 2014; Sheffield, 2016). At the time of this study, its cumulative enrollment was approximately 5,000 students (both residential and virtual campuses combined, including graduates and undergraduates). The overall enrollment within its College of Business was 312 students. Academically, it awards both graduate and undergraduate business degrees, and minors among business areas are available for undergraduates. The highest degree awarded by the host institution is the Educational Specialist (Ed.S.) degree whereas the lowest degree awarded is the Associate of Arts (A.A.) degree. Its College of Business awards the A.A., Bachelor of Business Administration (B.B.A.), Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Technology, and Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) degrees. The host institution also awards undergraduate certificates in homeland security and geospatial information systems. The host institution possesses regional accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and possesses program accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs. During the preceding five years, the host institution entered into a variety of international agreements and commenced offering new programs to attract new students in order to increase student enrollment within its College of Business. International agreements consisted of partnering with two Chinese universities to import students within its undergraduate B.B.A. degree. New programs included the offering of an undergraduate certificate in homeland security, the addition of a finance concentration within its B.B.A. program, and the addition of an M.B.A. program that contained general and finance concentration areas. These new programs attracted a variety of domestic and international students, both undergraduate and graduate. However, despite achieving its goal of increasing enrollment numbers, the College of Business experienced the age-old issues of plagiarism. Essentially, when enrollment increased, so did instances of plagiarism. Depending upon the severity of the plagiarism, the consequences at the host institution may be dire for students. Generally, reprimands are issued along with some type of academic monitoring to ensure that infractions do not occur again. In a worst case instance, the host institution may expel plagiarists who exhibit egregious acts or that recidivate during succeeding assignments. After attempting to initially mitigate plagiarism increases through organizational policies that necessitated expulsion, the host institution realized that deterring and correcting aberrant behavior to ensure student retention was less expensive than completely expelling students and obtaining replacements. Given these incidents, the College of Business conducted a survey to better understand the mindsets, motivations, and perceptions of plagiarism within its student body. Three issues were investigated within the survey: 1) perceptions regarding the necessary evil aspects of plagiarism, 2) perceptions of professionalism, and 3) perceptions regarding the legality of plagiarism. Previou (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1085&context=gerjournal

Daniel Adrian Doss, Russ Henley, Ursula Becker, David McElreath, Hilliard Lackey, Don Jones, Feng He, Mingyu Li, Shimin Lin. Assessing Male vs. Female Business Student Perceptions of Plagiarism at a Southern Institution of Higher Education, Georgia Educational Researcher, 2016, Volume 13, Issue 1,