Korean medical students’ knowledge about and attitudes towards plagiarism according to their commission of plagiarism

Purpose This study investigated Korean medical students’ knowledge about and attitudes towards plagiarism according to their commission of plagiarism. Furthermore, the institutional environment regarding plagiarism was assessed. Methods A questionnaire provided by Turnitin was distributed to 67 first-year medical students of Hallym University, Korea in December 17, 2015 through SurveyMonkey, a web survey platform. Of the 67 subjects, responses from 60 students (89.6%) were analyzed with descriptive statistics and a comparative analysis. Results The respondents’ average knowledge level about plagiarism, measured as the item difficulty index for the relevant 8 items, was 0.658 (maximum 1). More than half did not know where they could find guidance about how to reference others’ work. They were only a little confident (41.7%) or not confident (11.7%) in referencing others’ work. They felt that plagiarism was not dealt with seriously at the university (53.3%). Eighty percent of students wanted their instructors to use text-matching software to check students’ work, and many of them thought that text-matching software helps them to spend more time making sure that references are correct (48.3%). Forty-six (75.4%) students reported having copied and pasted from the internet for their work without citing the original work. There were no significant differences in knowledge about plagiarism, attitudes towards classmates who plagiarize, or recommended actions against classmates who plagiarize according to whether students had committed plagiarism. Conclusion The medical students’ knowledge about plagiarism was insufficient. This medical school should introduce more intensive training on how to correctly reference others’ work and on the concept of plagiarism.