Plagiarism and its effects on the quality, credibility and integrity of student research at GZU.

Abstract

Plagiarism, an academic offense and its detection and prevention is crucial for academic integrity. The main purpose of the study was to explore the existence of academic dishonesty as it impacts on the ability to write assignments and research projects by Great Zimbabwe University students from Gary Magadzire School of Agriculture. Submitted assignments and honours projects were retrieved and subjected to Turnitin and Urkund plagiarism check software’s. A total of thirty-nine (30 assignments and 9 projects) were uploaded to each software. Descriptive statistics were used to categorise responses from students. A chi –square test was used to test the association between plagiarism and demographic parameters, while a t – test was used to check the level of plagiarism between tools and tasks. A binary logistic regression was performed to check the relationship between plagiarism and, gender, age and mode of learning. Plagiarism was significantly influenced (P < 0.05) by gender, method of enrolment and task attempted. The similarity indices where higher than the recommended at 50.32 and 48.97% for Turnitin and Urkund respectively. The correlation for plagiarism between the two software’s was high (0.80%). It can be concluded that students plagiarized and might not be aware of the consequences of such behaviour. There is need for training on plagiarism in order to at least enlighten both students and staff that plagiarism is an academic offense and efforts to stamp out the behaviour are critical