Studies in Higher Education 2011, 1–13, iFirst Article ISSN 0307-5079 print/ISSN 1470-174X online © 2011 Society for Research into Higher Education DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2010.523457 http://www.informaworld.com 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 Does the adoption of plagiarism-detection software in higher education reduce plagiarism? Robert J. Youmans* Department of Psychology, California State University, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330-8255, USA Taylor and Francis CSHE_A_523457.sgm 10.1080/03075079.2010.523457 Studies in Higher Education 0307-5079 (print)/1470-174X (online) Article 2011 Society for Research into Higher Education 00 0000002011 PhD RobertYoumans robert.youmans@csun.edu In two studies, students at California State University, Northridge wrote papers that were checked for plagiarism using plagiarism-detection software. In the first study, half of the students in two classes were randomly selected and told by the professor that their term papers would be scanned for plagiarism using the software. Students in the remainder of each class were not informed that the software would be used. The researcher predicted that students who were explicitly warned about the use of the software would plagiarize less than students who were not, but the warning had no effect. In a second study, students wrote two papers in a series. Their knowledge about plagiarism-detection software was inversely correlated with plagiarism rates on the first paper, but no correlation was found between knowledge and plagiarism on the second paper. Instead, participants were discovered to draw repeatedly from the same sources of plagiarized material across papers. Keywords: plagiarism; academic dishonesty; plagiarism prevention; plagiarism- detection software; styles of plagiarism Of all the negative student behaviours that instructors in higher education find chal- lenging to manage, student plagiarism ranks highly among them. Plagiarism occurs when a student intentionally or unintentionally uses another person’s words or ideas without properly crediting their source, an offense that most university officials consider to be a serious breach of appropriate academic conduct. Plagiarism is considered a seri- ous offense not only because students compromise their integrity (McCabe, Treviño, and Butterfield 2002), and may impair their own and others’ learning (Isserman 2003), but also because it is believed that plagiarism in the classroom can lead to plagiarism in the workplace (Martin 2009), in government (see Helm 2003), in online learning (see Jackson 2006) and in peer-reviewed publications (Long et al 2009). As with other deviant behaviours, determining the true prevalence of plagiarism in higher education is a challenge, but studies that have asked students to anonymously self-report their own acts of plagiarism have found that between 7% and 55% of university students openly admit to some form of intentional plagiarism (Carroll 2005; Hale 1987; Kraemer 2008; McCabe, Treviño, and Butterfield 2002; Roig 1997; Scanlon and Newman 2002; Selwyn 2008), with 9.6% in one study reporting that they did so ‘often’ (Scanlon and Neumann 2002). These figures are unacceptable by most university standards, but are especially so when one considers that the self-report methods employed by these studies omit students who lied about, forgot about or who unknowingly committed plagiarism. *Email: robert.youmans@csun.edu CSHE_A_523457.fm Page 1 Friday, February 25, 2011 7:50 PM