Academic disintegrity among medical students: a randomised response technique study

Abstract

Academic integrity is widely disrespected in different ways among medical students. Effective policies and interventions are required to control these misbehaviours in future doctors in order to optimise medical practice. Almost all respondents found it not difficult to use the RRT; the technique proved to be an effective and easily applied method of eliciting truthful responses to sensitive questions and represents an alternative to conventional anonymising techniques.

Perceptions of Plagiarism Among Medical and Nursing Students in Erbil, Iraq

“…Unfortunately, participating in acts of plagiarism as a medical student may negatively affect their medical knowledge and clinical skills, resulting in potentially unskilled physicians entering the workforce. 12,13 Moreover, the incidence of plagiarism among nursing students has become more frequent in recent years, which is alarming in light of the need for integrity in this profession. [14][15][16] The current study aimed to evaluate the frequency and perceptions of plagiarism among a sample of medical and nursing students and identify factors that may lead such students to plagiarise.…”

Who would students ask for help in academic cheating? Cross-sectional study of medical students in Croatia

“…Social and educational system predictors of academic cheating are particularly strong in post-communist countries in Europe, not only in medicine but also in other disciplines, such as economy and business, leading to drastic differences in cheating: the prevalence of academic cheating in these disciplines was 88% in Eastern European countries compared with 5% in Scandinavian countries [ 10 ]. A recent study from Iran, using a randomized response technique to control for responses to sensitive issues, demonstrated that 93% of medical students impersonated an absent student during a mandatory class [ 15 ]. We showed in our previous report from 2004 that 94% of the students from the same medical school as in the current study admitted to cheating at least once during their studies [ 11 ].…”

“…However, there are few studies that examined factors that looked at the persons who are actually involved or would be potentially engaged in collaborative academic cheating. Surveys that investigated attitudes towards engaging others in cheating use general terms such as a “colleague”, “peer”, “another student”, “someone else”, and sometimes a “friend” [ 4 , 5 , 15 , 16 ], although it can be hypothesized that the view of those involved in collaborative cheating would be different for less conspicuous than for more serious academic transgressions. For example, it could be considered risky to collaborate with strangers in serious cheating behaviour, which would be asked only from individuals in a close relationship.…”

Medical student plagiarism in problem-based learning courses

“…Students’ academic misconduct has been an issue in medical education and is more likely with development of technology ( 1 , 2 ). We investigated the occurrence of plagiarism by medical students in a problem-based learning (PBL) course.…”