Pervasiveness of scholastic duplicity and plagiarism among the pharmacy students in Pakistan

Abstract

The present study was conducted with the aim to identify pharmacy students’ attitude towards the plagiarism and scholastic duplicity in Pakistan. This cross sectional study was conducted from Aug till Oct 2013. A pretested 17 items questionnaire was administered to first to fifth professional pharmacy undergraduate students of different private and public sector universities of Karachi. The questionnaire sought the demographics of the students, their attitude towards the plagiarism and scholastic duplicity in Pakistan. Descriptive statistics on the sample characteristics including percentages were computed. One way ANOVA was used to determine the influence of gender, institute and professional year on their responses. More than 75% of the students copy another student’s work without their knowledge. More that 60% of the students submit the assignment that has already been assessed. More than 55% utilize the efforts of their colleagues to write assignment or part of the assignment and considered to pass off other ideas/ images/design as their own. On the other hand, more than 55 % of the pharmacy undergraduate students did not used concealed information in examination and only 1.82% invents references themselves. Pharmacy is a noble profession in which the students are trained to be an ethical health care professional .There is a great need of time to properly educate students about the policy regarding plagiarism to cut down the trend of increased rate of cheating and plagiarism. Specific procedures should be developed to become more vigilant about the cheating behaviors of students.

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