A Comparison of the Act and Frequency of Plagiarism between Technical and Non-Technical Programme Undergraduates

Abstract

Concerned with intellectual theft, we decided to examine intellectual theft among undergraduates at a private higher education institution. The aim of this study was to compare the act and frequency of plagiarism, particularly between programmes, gender, year of study and academic performance. This study adopted the quantitative approach, using a questionnaire to gather the students’ background information and the general practice of intellectual theft. It was administered to 120 students, i.e. 30 students undertaking the Engineering, IT, Management and Creative Multimedia programmes. For the purpose of this study, we categorised the programmes into Technical programme (TP), i.e. Engineering and IT programmes (science discipline) and Non-Technical programme (NTP), i.e. Management and Creative Multimedia programmes (non-science discipline). This study found that the act of plagarising was prevalent in both categories of the programmes, however, more prevalent among the technical programme students than the non-technical programme students. We also found that the act of intellectual theft was more evident among the males than female, junior than seniors and average academic achievers than high achievers. A comparison between programmes found significant differences in the act of plagiarism among gender, particularly among the female NTP students, among the Year 3 students and among the high achievers. No significant difference was found in relation to the frequency of plagiarism between programmes and gender, but among the students who sometimes plagiarise by level of study and by academic achievements.