Aim To develop and test the psychometric characteristics of a questionnaire measuring attitudes toward plagiarism.Methods Participants were 227 undergraduates and graduate students (128 women and 99 men) from three Croatian universities, with a median age of 21 years (range 18 to 48). Research was conducted from March to June 2009. For the purpose of construction of the first version of the questionnaire, 67 statements (items) were developed. The statements were based on the relevant literature and were developed following rules and recommendations for questionnaire writing, and 36 items were chosen for final validation. Factor analysis was used to find out the factor structure of the questionnaire and to measure construct validity. ResultsThe final version of the questionnaire consisted of 29 items divided into a three-factor structure: factor I -positive attitude toward plagiarism (12 items); factor IInegative attitude toward plagiarism (7 items); and factor III -subjective norms toward plagiarism (10 items). Cronbach α was calculated to confirm the reliability of the scale: factor I -α = 0.83; factor II -α = 0.79; and factor III -α = 0.85. Correlations between factors were: -0.37 between I and II, -0.41 between I and III, and +0.31 between II and III.Conclusion Attitudes Toward Plagiarism questionnaire was developed, with good psychometric characteristics. It will be used in future research as a standardized tool for measuring attitudes toward plagiarism. BASIC SCIENCES doi: 10.3325/cmj.2010.51.195 BASIC SCIENCES 196 Croat Med J. 2010 51: 195-201 www.cmj.hrIn recent years, scientific misconduct and academic dishonesty have been in the focus of interest of the academic and scientific community (1-5). Academic misconduct is defined as any type of cheating that compromises the educational process and academic integrity of the institution. It includes plagiarism, fabrication, deception, corruption, and sabotage, while scientific misconduct usually includes fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and other unethical behavior in professional scientific research (6-8). Plagiarism is the most frequent type of misconduct (9,10) and is defined as "unauthorized appropriation of another's work, ideas, methods, results or words without acknowledging the source and original author" (4). Self-plagiarism is widely considered to be a type of plagiarism, and it is defined as the inappropriate presentation of one's own published data or text as new and original. Among all types of misconduct in science and in an academic environment, plagiarism is consider to be the most vicious between peers, because it constitutes theft of intellectual property, which is the core achievement of intellectual work.The implementation of computer technology and the availability of scientific papers and books in electronic form have facilitated plagiarizing by allowing simple "copy-andpaste" procedures (11). On the other hand, the same technology has also enabled the development of plagiarism detection software (12,13).The extent of acade...

Dental students have generally positive attitudes towards e-learning. Teachers should adopt strategies to change negative attitudes by introducing more e-learning courses in lower study years and should encourage students to use the Internet in their education and communication with teachers and colleagues.

Introduction: Plagiarism is one of the most frequent and serious forms of misconduct in academic environment. The cross-sectional survey study was done with aim to explore the attitudes toward plagiarism. Materials and methods: First year students of Faculty of Pharmacy and Medical Biochemistry, University of Zagreb, Croatia (N = 146) were anonymously tested using Attitude toward Plagiarism (ATP) questionnaire. The questionnaire is composed of 29 statements on a 5 point Likert scale, (1 -strongly disagree, 2 -disagree, 3 -neither agree nor disagree, 4 -agree and 5 -strongly agree) measuring three attitudinal factors (positive and negative attitude and subjective norms) toward plagiarism. Results were presented as score (mean ± SD) followed by reference range (divided in three equal parts: low, moderate and high score). Score range expends from 12 to 60 (low: 12-28; moderate: 29-45; high: 46-60) measuring positive attitude toward plagiarism, from 7 to 35 (low: 7-16; moderate: 17-26; high: 27-35) measuring negative attitude toward plagiarism and from 10 to 50 (low: 10-23; moderate: 24-37; high: 38-50) measuring subjective norms. Response rate was 99% (N = 144). Results: Results revealed moderate positive attitude (36 ± 7) and subjective norms (32 ± 6) toward plagiarism and moderate to high negative attitude (26 ± 4). Plagiarism is perceived as not very important (63% of students), harmless (59%), justi ed under special circumstances (42%), and sometimes necessary (35%). Conclusion: Students' attitudes re ect insu cient level of seriousness and awareness with which plagiarism is perceived. They are lacking knowledge on scienti c methodology, academic and scienti c misconduct. Plan and program to educate students about academic integrity and research methodology is required on all educational level.

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.

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Attitudes towards open peer review, open data and use of preprints influence scientists’ engagement with those practices. Yet there is a lack of validated questionnaires that measure these attitudes. The goal of our study was to construct and validate such a questionnaire and use it to assess attitudes of Croatian scientists. We first developed a 21-item questionnaire called Attitudes towards Open data sharing, preprinting, and peer-review (ATOPP), which had a reliable four-factor structure, and measured attitudes towards open data, preprint servers, open peer-review and open peer-review in small scientific communities. We then used the ATOPP to explore attitudes of Croatian scientists (n = 541) towards these topics, and to assess the association of their attitudes with their open science practices and demographic information. Overall, Croatian scientists’ attitudes towards these topics were generally neutral, with a median (Md) score of 3.3 out of max 5 on the scale score. We also found no gender (P = 0.995) or field differences (P = 0.523) in their attitudes. However, attitudes of scientist who previously engaged in open peer-review or preprinting were higher than of scientists that did not (Md 3.5 vs. 3.3, P<0.001, and Md 3.6 vs 3.3, P<0.001, respectively). Further research is needed to determine optimal ways of increasing scientists’ attitudes and their open science practices.

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