Attitudes towards plagiarism among faculty members in Egyptian universities: A field study

Maintaining and promoting academic integrity is one of the most important
challenges faced by higher education institutions. Plagiarism is one of the most
important aspects of academic misconduct and violating this integrity. There are
many strategies that can monitor and combat plagiarism, including measuring the
attitudes of plagiarism among students, researchers and faculty members in
universities.
Objective:
The present study aims to measure the attitudes of Egyptian university
faculty toward plagiarism.
Method and procedures:
Attitudes of Egyptian universities faculty toward plagiarism have been
measured according to a questionnaire designed in a previous study to measure
such behavior in the academic community. The questionnaire was translated into
Arabic and tested by a sample of the study community. It was used to measure
the positive and negative attitudes towards plagiarism as well as the subjective
norms of the faculty members. Also, the questionnaire examined the relationship
between these attitudes and the study variables that included the type of
specialization, training on academic integrity and scientific writing, study abroad.
Results:
The study revealed a moderate attitude among faculty members towards
plagiarism and that there were no statistically significant differences according to
the study variables except for specialization. It was found that those belonging to
the disciplines of basic and applied sciences had an attitude towards plagiarism
more than their peers in other disciplines.
Recommendation:
The study presented several recommendations, the most important of
which was the need to design a training program on academic integrity, which
must be obligatory for academic promotions.