Research ethics dilemma in higher education: Impact of internet access, ethical controls, and teaching factors on student plagiarism

This quantitative research study explores the external factors of plagiarism among university students in Pakistan. Data were collected from Islamabad city-based university students using an on-line survey that contains questions related to students’ plagiarism, from the internet access, ethical control, and teaching factors. For this research, we used a snowball sampling technique for data collection. We received 170 useable responses out of 180 distributed. A hierarchical regression analyses technique was performed for testing the relative contributions of gender, program level, field of study, enrollment status, mode of delivery, internet access, ethical controls, and teaching factors on the prediction of plagiarism. Though statistically analyzed results of this study suggest that internet access has a negative association with students’ plagiarism, ethics control and teaching factors have a positive association. These findings imply that culture and personal factors have an essential role in strict implementation of rules and creating awareness on the importance of preventing student’s involvement in plagiarism.