Measuring Chinese Engineering Students' Perceptions of and Attitudes Toward Plagiarism

This article reports on a disciplinary study of Chinese university students' perceptions of and attitudes toward plagiarism in the context of Chinese educational background. A sample of 119 engineering undergraduates rated their (dis)agreement with 26 items using a five-point Likert scale. Qualitative and quantitative analyses revealed that Chinese engineering students tended to hold a much stronger stance against plagiarism than their foreign counterparts did. They were inclined to resort to external factors to clarify their perceptions to elements that aggravate plagiarism, rather than to internal factors such as subjective inclination, and the perceptions of plagiarism. Due to insufficient knowledge of and training on plagiarism, they were inclined to justify junior students' original and soft plagiarism, and held a weaker stance against severity and penalty for plagiarism.