Awareness and Perception of Plagiarism among Undergraduate Students of Selected Higher Institutions in Rivers State, Nigeria (Published)
Plagiarism has eaten deep into the fabrics of higher institutions worldwide and it has continued to be a global concern. A lot of measures have been put in place by organization/institutions to curb this menace. Some had even subscribed to plagiarism detection software such as Turnitin. This crime is so common among the undergraduate students, some go to the Internet or textbook to copy and paste without acknowledging the source. The understanding of various perspectives and attitude towards this issue is critical to finding a lasting solution. This study therefore investigated the awareness and perception of plagiarism among final year students of Faculty of Education in Rivers State University and Final year – HND2 students (Accredited departments) in Captain Elechi Amadi Polytechnic. Four research questions were formulated to guide the study, the study employed a descriptive survey research design and correlational study while using a well-structured questionnaire and rating scale as data collection instrument. The sample size of the study is 310, the instrument was designed into two sections. Section A covers the background data of the students while section B covered the research questions. Descriptive statistical techniques like table of frequency counts and percentages were employed in the analysis of the background data, mean score, standard deviation and correlation coefficient were used in answering the research questions while regression was used in testing the hypotheses. The result revealed that p-value of .211>.05 which means that there is no significant relationship between awareness and perception of plagiarism among the students. It also shows that every one of the discussants were aware of what plagiarism is and most students plagiarize without even realizing the implications. It was recommended that there should be penalties from institution and other relevant authorities to punish students who do plagiarism.
Keywords: Plagiarism, Students, Undergraduate, awareness of plagiarism, perception of plagiarism