The Understanding of Plagiarism of Graduate Students at Khon Kaen University

Abstract

This survey research aimed to explore the perception of 362 Khon Kaen University  graduate  students  who  registered  in  the  second  semester  of  the academic year 2015. The study data were collected through questionnaires and analyzed by frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test and F-test, and the Shaffe test for analyzing pairs of means of their differences. The findings concluded that the analysis of the data on the graduate students’ perception of 4 aspects  of  plagiarism:  the  definition  of  plagiarism,  literature  review,  documents citing, and consequences of plagiarism, revealed that they were aware of the first 3 aspects of plagiarism, but their awareness on the consequences of plagiarism and dishonesty was minimal; and with regard to the literature review, it was found that some students were not aware of paraphrasing and document citing.

The researcher, therefore, recommend that the Graduate School of Khon Kaen  University  provide  the  graduate  students  with  trainings  on  plagiarism, document citing, use of ‘turnitin’ program for plagiarism detection and its interpretation of the detection results.