Perception And Occurrence Of Plagiarism: A Case Study Of Students At A University In The Eastern Region

Abstract

Plagiarism problem is widespread in the educational institutions around the globe. The purposes of
this research had 3 main points: (1) to examine the level of perception of plagiarism of the English major
students at a university in the Eastern region of Thailand, (2) to investigate the relationship between perception
and occurrence of plagiarism in the students’ writing, and (3) to explore types of plagiarism (if) found in the
students’ writing. The population were 79 fourth-year undergraduate students which are 25 male and 64
female students. Data collection was plagiarism questionnaire adopted from Rezanejad and Rezaei (2013) and
writing the second chapter of the English project chosen by the students themselves. This research used
descriptive statistics to analyze the perception level of all students and Turnitin program identified the
percentage of plagiarism from students’ writing. Pearson’s correlation coefficient will be used to find the
relationship of perception and occurrence of plagiarism in the students’ writing. The results provide important
information about perception and occurrence of plagiarism, including the types of plagiarism that (if) found in
students’ writing clearly. The researcher thought it could be helpful to solve the writing problem of students
and teachers can develop and emphasize the techniques to avoid plagiarism in the students’ writing