Impact of pressure, self-efficacy, and self-competency on students’ plagiarism in higher education

ABSTRACT

To explore students’ plagiarism in higher level education, we designed a quantitative study and collected data from enrolled university students from Islamabad, the capital city of Pakistan. This was done by distributing a web-link for an online survey (Google form) through WhatsApp social media mobile software. We applied structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques by using IBM SPSS AMOS 24.0.0 software to analyze collected data. The research findings suggest that some human factors do in fact exist and that these factors drive students to engage in certain unethical practices of plagiarism. Apart from poor training and lack of skills on the students’ part, the pressures and the self-efficacy they face as they engage in research practices can make students susceptible to plagiarize.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic ethics
• academic integrity
• educational innovation
• higher education
• influence factors
• plagiarism
• university students
• Pakistan

Acknowledgments

The first author (Anam Fatima) would also like to express gratitude to the China Scholarship Council (CSC) for awarding full scholarship to pursue her Master’s research studies at the USTC, China. We thank all survey participants, and also the receiving editor David B. Resnik, and the anonymous reviewers whose thoughtful critique helped to improve the article. The authors would like to acknowledge the technical support of Writing Lab, TecLabs, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico, in the production of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.