Exploring the attitudes of medical faculty members and students in Pakistan towards plagiarism: a cross sectional survey

Abstract

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 (ATPQ) 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 ATPQ in the present sample. It had an acceptable Cronbach's alpha value of 0.73. There were 421 medical students (218 (52%) female, 46%3 rd 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 1-10 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 ATPQ. 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 ATPQ were positive. We propose training in medical writing and research ethics as part of the under and post graduate medical curriculum. PeerJ PrePrints | https://dx.doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1127v1 | CC-BY 4.0 Open Access | recPrePrints 18 Abstract word count: 286 19 Article word count: 3184 (excluding references and tables) 20 21 Declaration: 22 Presented as Poster presentation by AW at the 3rd Annual conference of association for 23 excellence in medical education conference (AEME 2014), 7th -9th March 2014, University of 24 health sciences, Lahore. 25 PeerJ PrePrints | https://dx.doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1127v1 | CC-BY 4.0 Open Access | recAbstract 27 Objective: The objective of this survey was to explore the attitudes towards plagiarism of 28 faculty members and medical students in Pakistan. 29 Methods: The attitudes toward plagiarism questionnaire (ATPQ) was modified and distributed 30 among 550 medical students and 130 faculty members in 7 medical colleges of Lahore and 31 Rawalpindi. Data was entered in the SPSS v.20 and descriptive statistics were analyzed. The 32 questionnaire was validated by principal axis factoring analysis.33 Results: Response rate was 93% and 73% respectively. Principal axis factoring analysis 34 confirmed one factor structure of ATPQ in the prese...

Exploring attitude toward research and plagiarism among faculty members and senior residents in a medical school of North India: A cross-sectional study

“…[11] Rathore et al have also reported that only one-quarter of students in the sample had formal training in medical writing and research ethics whereas most of the faculty members had received this training probably due to involvement in Continuing Medical Education (CME), self-directed learning and revision of faculty promotion rules. [17] Results of the current study have shown that 87.1% of the faculty members and 59.7% of senior residents were conducting research due to personal interest and this finding was found to have statistical significance for negative ATP.…”

“…These results are in consonance with those reported by Rathore et al from Pakistan. [17] Mean scores for positive domain, negative domain, and subjective norms of ATP scale were 30.54 ± 6.7, 24.34 ± 2.9, and 28.72 ± 6.6, respectively, in the current study. Pupovac et al also reported moderate positive attitude and subjective norms toward plagiarism with moderate to high negative attitude (36 ± 7, 26 ± 4, and 32 ± 6, respectively).…”