Research Plagiarism in Academic Writing of Postgraduate Students Specializing in English: Myanmar University Context

Abstract

The objectives of this study were 1) to investigate the postgraduate students’
awareness and knowledge about research plagiarism, 2) to examine the
common forms of research plagiarism committed by students in their
master’s theses, 3) to study their perceptions on their referencing skills, and
4) to study the actions taken by universities against postgraduate students
who plagiarize. The samples were 110 postgraduate students, and 22
supervisors. The collected data were conducted by the questionnaire survey
with the postgraduate students and the follow-up interviews with the
supervisors. The statistics for data analysis were percentage, mean and
standard deviation. The findings of this study were revealed that overall,

only (M=1.44) of the participants were aware of the meaning of plagiarism.
Approximately (M=0.49) of the participants have not heard about
plagiarism. Regarding common forms of plagiarism to be committed by
students in their master’s theses, majority of the theses (M=1.24) were found
copied and pasted from written source or web followed by presenting or
citing the secondary source as a primary source (M=1.29). According to
interview responses of common forms of plagiarism reported by supervisor
participants, most of the supervisors reported lack of plagiarism workshop.
The data showed that students were not confident of their referencing skills.
Even though most of the students were aware of the university policies,
systems and procedures for involving plagiarism, they might plagiarize due
to foreign language problems,