An Investigation of Academic Plagiarism of Thai Postgraduate Learners from Interdisciplinary Studies

Abstract

The purposes of this mixed-method study were to (i) investigate and compare the perception of academic plagiarism of Thai postgraduate students from interdisciplinary studies; (ii) verify and compare the students’ actual practice of plagiarism; (iii) examine and justify contributory factors influencing plagiarism; and (iv) estimate and construct alternative measures for plagiarism prevention in the Thai context. The findings were as follows: (1) the quantitative analysis of 196 students’ perception, comprising awareness and knowledge, of plagiarism based on two main fields of study—science and social sciences—from interdisciplinary studies and groups of high achievers and limited achievers was found to have no statistically significant difference at the .05 level; (2) no significant difference in 153 students’ actual practice of plagiarism was determined when analyzed based on their field of study. However, with the levels of English-language proficiency-based analysis, a significant difference in actual practice of plagiarism was found between the average writing-test score of the high-achiever group (63.26) and that of the limited-achiever group (30.95) at the .05 level (t = -13.74, p < .05); (3) contributory factors influencing plagiarism, derived from responses from 196 learner-evaluation-forms, 48 instructor/ administrator questionnaires, and six student and 19 teacher interviews, were relevant to affective-psychological and environmental-situational constructs; and (4) the practical measures for plagiarism prevention in the Thai context were rated for “having very strict policies, rules, and practices to avoid plagiarism” (45.80%), “teaching how and when to cite sources” (43.80%), “raising students’ awareness of the values of academic honesty” (33.30%), and “having students write an annotated bibliography” (16.70%), respectively. Alternative measures for plagiarism prevention are also presented.