Perceptions of undergraduate pharmacy students on plagiarism in three major public universities in Egypt

ABSTRACT

The survey aimed to capture the perceptions of undergraduate pharmacy students towards plagiarism in three major public universities in Cairo, Egypt: Helwan, Ain-Shams, and Cairo Universities. This was a paper-based self-administrated survey study. The questionnaire was validated by both content and face validation. The final survey form captured the knowledge of the students on plagiarism in terms of definitions, attitudes, and practices. Four hundred and fourteen students, 320 females and 94 males, participated in the study. There was a significant difference between the students who knew the definition of plagiarism among the three universities with p-value = .01. More than half of the participants (67%) claimed that they had no previous education or training on plagiarism. However, after being informed about plagiarism, most of them agreed that plagiarism should be regarded as stealing and a punishment. Additionally, poor study skills and the ease of copying and pasting from the Internet were identified by the majority of the students to be the leading causes of plagiarism. Pharmacy students need to be more educated on plagiarism and its consequences on research and educational ethics. Finally, more strict policies should be incorporated to monitor and control plagiarism in undergraduate sections.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic dishonesty
• cheating
• pharmacy students
• plagiarism
• research ethics
• research misconduct

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Prof. Dr. Abdelhamed Ibrahem, Professor of Pharmacy Practice at Faculty of Pharmacy Helwan University, for his support of this work. They would also like to thank Samar Samir, Mervit Ali, and Ola Yasser, students at the Faculty of Pharmacy Helwan University, for their great help in distributing the surveys among the students of the three faculties.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.