Plagiarism and costs

College Student Journal, Sept, 2009 by Robert Liebler

It is costly for faculty to deal with cheating. Keith-Spiegel et al. (1998) identified several of these costs and argued that they can be grouped into four categories: emotionality, difficult, fear, and denial. I argue that the emotional and fear costs for faculty make it unlikely that the common approaches to dealing with plagiarism will be effective. I provide an example of an old approach which diminishes some of the costs for faculty.

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Evidence indicates that cheating on written assignments is common, perhaps more common than cheating on exams. For example, statistics reported by Premeaux (2005) indicate that students estimate that the "percentage of students you think cheat on a typical written assignment" is about 45% while the "percentage of students you think cheat on a typical exam" is about 32%. Hollinger and Lanza-Kaduce (1996) report that about 38% of students admitted that they had plagiarized during a fifteen-week period.

While cheating appears to be common, catching students cheating is less common. Roig (1997) reports that 3% of students "admitted to have been caught plagiarizing." Diekhoff et al. (1996) find that about 2% of students say "that they had ever been caught cheating during their tenure as college students." Diekhoff et al. do not single out plagiarism.

The disparity between the statistics on cheating and getting caught is striking. The statistics indicate that the chance that an individual will be caught in a particular instance of cheating is quite small. Given the common approaches to dealing with plagiarism, the statistics suggest that the costs imposed by faculty on students for plagiarism are quite low.

Keith-Spiegel et al. (1998) identify costs for faculty of dealing with cheating. My purpose in this paper is to examine the implications that these costs have for the effectiveness of the common approaches to dealing with plagiarism. This examination suggests a course of action--an oral exam--that may be appropriate for some faculty in some situations.

Common Approaches

Plagiarize is defined in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1988) as "to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own." Writing manuals provide additional information. For example, the Little, Brown Handbook (1989) states "When you summarize or paraphrase, you do not use quotation marks because the words are your own. However, you must acknowledge the author of the idea." Even though this seems straightforward, Roig (1997) finds that "students are often unclear as to what constitutes plagiarism and correct forms of paraphrasing." Furthermore, Roig (2001) finds that faculty also have difficulty understanding plagiarism. Accordingly, one approach to dealing with plagiarism is education.

Landrau, Druen, and Arcuri (2002) find that simply educating students about plagiarism leads to a decrease in plagiarism. Barry (2006) finds that practice paraphrasing by students leads to a decrease in plagiarism.

A second approach to dealing with plagiarism involves the method of designing and carrying out the assignment. Well-known techniques include assigning a narrow topic and requiring an outline and multiple drafts. Wilhoit (1994) advises instructors to "require students to submit photocopies of documented materials."

A third approach is to emphasize that plagiarism is wrong and that efforts will be made to detect plagiarism and penalize those who are caught. Brown and Howell (2001) find "that having the students read a carefully worded statement about plagiarism was an effective way to change the perceptions of how seriously plagiarism breaches academic guidelines." McLafferty and Foust (2004) describe various electronic tools that can be used to detect electronic plagiarism. Martin (2005) used electronic means to detect plagiarism, told the students he was doing this, and told them that in prior semesters he had detected plagiarism and reduced grades accordingly. Martin found that this approach resulted in a decrease in plagiarism over a period of five semesters.

Costs

Although the common approaches seem like they should work, the high incidence of plagiarism coupled with the low faculty-imposed costs borne by students indicates that frequently, faculty are not effective at deterring plagiarism and faculty choose not to impose costs on students for plagiarism. Presumably, the costs for faculty of dealing with plagiarism are high relative to the benefits for faculty of achieving a low incidence of plagiarism.

Evidence on the costs for faculty is provided by Keith-Spiegel et al. (1998) in their survey of psychology faculty which investigates "why professors ignore cheating." They find that the stated reasons can be grouped into four categories: emotionality, difficult, fear, and denial. The emotional category primarily reflects the stress of the accusation and the ensuing process. The difficult category primarily involves the time and effort of dealing with the cheating. The fear category captures the fear of reprisals. The denial category reflects the sentiment that action is not necessary.