Perceptions of and Attitudes toward Plagiarism and Factors Contributing to Plagiarism: a Review of Studies

The abundance of information technology and electronic resources for academic materials has contributed to the attention given to research on plagiarism from various perspectives. Among the issues that have attracted researchers’ attention are perceptions of plagiarism and attitudes toward plagiarism. This article presents a critical review of studies that have been conducted to examine staff’s and students’ perceptions of and attitudes toward plagiarism. It also presents a review of studies that have focused on factors contributing to plagiarism. Our review of studies reveals that most of the studies on perceptions of plagiarism and attitudes toward plagiarism lack an in-depth analysis of the relationship between the perceptions of plagiarism and other contextual, sociocultural and institutional variables, or the relationship between attitudes toward plagiarism and students’ perceptions of various forms of plagiarism. Although our review shows that various factors can contribute to plagiarism, there is no taxonomy that can account for all these factors. Some suggestions for future research are provided in this review article.     

Irrational beliefs in major depression and generalized anxiety disorders in an Iranian sample: a preliminary study

Previous research on Rational Emotive Theory using western samples has shown that irrational belief systems are associated with emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression. In a replication of this work the present study was conducted to compare the scores of 29 clinically depressed, 31 clinically anxious, and 34 normal controls on the Irrational Beliefs Test in an Iranian sample. Consistent with Ellis's theory, depressed and anxious patients scored higher than the controls on scores for the full scale and all 10 subscales of the Irrational Beliefs Test. Also, the two patient groups differed significantly in their endorsement of 2 out of 10 irrational belief subscales but not in overall score on irrational beliefs. Results were interpreted in light of previous literature.     

A comparison of the PAI and MMPI-2 as predictors of faking bad in college students

Both the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2; Butcher et al., 2001) and Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) offer a large set of scales devoted to the identification of response styles. This study directly compared the effectiveness of the 2 inventories as indicators of overreporting. The 2 measures were administered to 52 college students instructed to fake bad under conditions describing either a forensic (n = 24) or psychiatric (n = 28) setting as well as to 432 psychiatric patients. Results indicated that the MMPI-2 F - K index and Fp Scale were the best single indicators of a faking bad response style and that the MMPI-2 scales were the better indicators as a set. However, the PAI scales demonstrated a significant level of incremental validity over the MMPI-2 indicators in every analysis conducted. The findings suggest that either inventory offers an effective approach to the detection of overreporting, and administering both inventories can enhance the accuracy of prediction further.     

Monitoring processes and metamemory experience in patients with dysexecutive syndrome

The aim of the present study was to determine whether monitoring measures are differentially disturbed in dysexecutive patients after frontal lesions. Twelve dysexecutive patients and 12 healthy controls were administered a paired-associates learning task. Their performances on recall prediction, judgment-of-learning (JOL), and feeling-of-knowing judgment (FOK) were then compared. The results revealed that the two groups differed only on accuracy measures of the FOK paradigm. The study of the overall correlations between the three measures of metamemory revealed a significant relation between recall prediction and accuracy measures of the JOL. We failed to find any significant correlation with the accuracy measures of the FOK. Taken together, our data confirm that metamemory experience is not a unitary construct but rather a group of distinct and quite independent mechanisms.     

Cognitive discernible factors between schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia (SZ) and schizoaffective disorders (SA) are associated with cognitive deficits. Generally, a schizoaffective diagnosis is associated with better prognosis on the level of social integration. It is also well established that cognition is an important factor for good social outcome in schizophrenia. We hypothesized that, although patients suffering from SA share symptoms with SZ, they can be differentiated on the basis of neurocognitive function and that SA perform better in several domains. METHOD: Performances of two groups SA (N = 13) and SZ (N = 44) were compared on several visual-motor tasks using CANTAB [Motor Screening (MOT), Reaction Time (RTI), Paired Associates Learning Task (PAL), and Stockings of Cambridge items (SOC)]. The two groups were matched for symptom severity. ANOVA with repeated measures was employed to determine whether any difference in cognitive scores during a 2-year period was significantly related to the diagnostic status. RESULTS: A significant and durable difference was observed between SZ and SA on motor screening and explicit memory tests where SA performed better. CONCLUSION: Neurocognitive tests may be relevant for distinguishing schizoaffective from schizophrenia, chiefly via tests tapping into visuo-spatial and visuo-motor coordination abilities (e.g., paired associated learning and motor screening).     

Differential responding to positive and negative items: the case of a negative item in a questionnaire for course and faculty evaluation

Previous factor-analytic studies of self-rating scales have yielded a factor on which negatively worded items loaded separately. The present study investigated the existence for such a factor in a questionnaire for course and teacher evaluation which included one negative item. The questionnaire was administered in 1,095 university classes. Two factors emerged, an exclusively positive-item factor and another factor on which the single negative item and one positive item loaded. It was suggested that both items of Factor 2 were ambiguous and may identify tendencies such as acquiescence, random responding, and response sets.     

The greening of engineers: A cross-cultural experience

Experience with a group of mechanical engineering seniors at the University of Colorado led to an informal experiment with engineering students in India. An attempt was made to qualitatively gauge the students’ ability to appreciate a worldview different from the standard engineering worldview—that of a mechanical universe. Qualitative differences between organic and mechanical systems were used as a point of discussion. Both groups were found to exhibit distinct thought and behavior patterns which provide important clues for sensitizing engineers to environmental issues in future educational initiatives. Cross-cultural and global dimensions of these initiatives are discussed.