Effect of intervention on knowledge and attitude towards plagiarism among postgraduate students in Bangladesh - a pilot study

Abstract

An attempt to tackle plagiarism locally, an exercise was developed and evaluated by pre-test and post-test questionnaire on 50 post-Graduate medical students at Department of Public Health & Informatics, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Bangladesh in 2017 to understand learner’s understanding regarding plagiarism. The comparative data between pre and post-test have highlighted a general lack of understanding of the basic concept of plagiarism and how to avoid plagiarism which improved after the intervention. For the question how to prevent plagiarism, before intervention, only 36% answered that a paraphrased sentence should be referenced. However, after intervention, responses to the same question significantly increased to 72%. Likewise, pre-intervention for a question of whether an article can be submitted to another journal if the decision is delayed, almost half of the students (48%) were not sure what should to do. But after intervention, all respondents (100%) understood that an article cannot be submitted to another journal if decision delayed. For a question of making two or three articles from same thesis/research with same introduction and method, all most half of the respondent (46%) answered “yes” and approximately half do not know the answer (40%) before intervention. However, after the intervention all respondents (100%) felt they should not make two or three articles with same introduction or methods. Also, after intervention all respondents (100%) felt self-plagiarism is taking paragraph/picture from own article without reference. These results indicate that the intervention of plagiarism education improved the knowledge of this group of post-graduate medical students.