Academic dishonesty by students of bioethics at a tertiary institution in Australia: an exploratory study

BACKGROUND: Institutions of higher learning are persistently struggling with issues of academic dishonesty such as plagiarism, despite the availability of university policies and guidelines for upholding academic integrity. METHODOLOGY: This was a descriptive qualitative study conducted on 37 students of a Healthcare Ethics course at an Australian tertiary institution from February 2016 to October 2018. The purpose of the study was to explore the reasons for plagiarism detected the Turnitin(R) plagiarism checking software and extensive review of manuscripts. The interviews were conducted in private rooms and in strict confidence. Thematic analysis was manually done. RESULTS: Four major themes namely, lack of interest; pressure of time with competing priorities; lack of understanding of the policy on academic honesty, and “the determined students” were identified. Sub themes under lack of interest were lack of preparation and effort, low self-efficacy, poor studying techniques, and convenience of internet sources. Under pressure of time, the subthemes were, misplaced priorities, procrastination, high workloads, poor planning, competing interests, and the perception of availability of time at the start of the semester. Regarding lack of understanding of the policy on academic honesty, the subthemes identified were, lake of awareness of plagiarism, lack of awareness of acceptable similarity, conflicting messages from tutors and confusion with high school learning. The determined students were those that either made all effort to reduce plagiarism but still remained high, used the another language at home other than English, had poor paraphrasing techniques or lacked resources for English language editing. CONCLUSION: There are varied and diverse reasons for plagiarism. There is a need to systematically reinforce and educate students on issues pertaining to academic dishonesty and their associated implications.