Chinese authorial identity: a model for scoring the Student Authorship Questionnaire

ABSTRACT

This study explores authorial identity and plagiarism among Chinese students studying accounting and business in China by drawing on Pittam et al.’s [2009, “Student Beliefs and Attitudes about Authorial Identity in Academic Writing.” Studies in Higher Education 34 (2): 153–170] Student Authorship Questionnaire (SAQ). Chinese students’ attitudes to authorship and plagiarism are reported as being similar to those of UK students from the same disciplinary background. This finding challenges the traditional view that Chinese students, because of cultural influences, are less likely to take ownership of their writing and more accepting of plagiarism than Western students. The study also investigates the psychometric properties of the SAQ in the context of Chinese students and offers a distinct Chinese model for scoring the instrument which takes account of Chinese students’ approaches to writing and, in particular, reflects the paradox of the Chinese learner.

KEYWORDS:

• Authorial identity
• plagiarism
• approach to writing
• Chinese paradox
• Student Authorship Questionnaire

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. A copy of the Chinese translation of the SAQ is available from the authors on request.

2. Means and standard deviations of sub-scales for UK students were obtained from Table 3, Panel B, Ballantine, Guo, and Larres (2015). Since Ballantine, Guo, and Larres (2015) only report at sub-scale level, it was not possible to report a comparison of means and standard deviations among individual items in the current study. Furthermore, tests of statistically significant difference could not be undertaken.