Knowledge and attitude towards plagiarism of dental post graduate students in Bangalore

Introduction: Plagiarism is defined as “unauthorized appropriation of another’s work, ideas, methods, results or words without acknowledging the source and original author. Academic misconduct has been the focus of interest in recent times. The new age of technology has enabled the scientific community to fabricate, falsify and plagiarize at a greater rate than before. Many people may plagiarize unknowingly as their knowledge regarding this is limited. Thus, this study was conducted to assess the knowledge and attitude of dental post graduate students of Bangalore city towards plagiarism. Method: A pretested self-administered questionnaire consisting of 24 items was used to assess the knowledge and attitude regarding plagiarism. The questionnaire was administered to the post graduate students of 5 randomly selected dental colleges of Bangalore. All the students present on that day were included in the study. Results: Branch wise 100% of Public Health dentists and Oral Pathologists were aware of what is plagiarism. Lowest percentage was seen in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (83.5%). Although almost 90% of the participants reported they know what plagiarism is, only 58% could state what it is correctly. Among the 3 years, 1st MDS students showed highest negative attitude towards plagiarism and highest practice related attitude. Those who learnt about plagiarism through self-efforts had better attitude (low positive and high negative attitude) and practice related attitude towards plagiarism. None of the differences were found to be statistically significant. Conclusion: Positive attitude scores towards plagiarism indicate tolerance towards plagiarism. Negative attitude towards plagiarism was high but still considered in the neutral zone. Self-efforts may be a more fruitful method of learning about plagiarism.