Survey says Internet cheating is rare

HANOVER, N.H. — Students use the Internet to cheat much less than previously thought, according to a new study previewed in February's edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The survey, conducted by a pair of professors at the Rochester Institute of Technology, compared the extent to which students plagiarized material from online and traditional sources while gauging their opinion on how often their peers plagiarized.

The survey found 24.7 percent of students admitted they "often," "very frequently," and "sometimes" did not acknowledge Internet sources while a comparable 27.6 percent did the same with books and other printed resources.

A large percentage of students believed cheating is much more widespread than the results reported. Fifty percent of the surveyed students said their cohorts quoted from the Internet without citation "often" or "very frequently," yet only 8 percent acknowledged plagiarizing at this rate.

RIT's Patrick Scanlon, who ran the study with fellow RIT professor David Neumann, explained the discrepancy between actual and perceived plagiarism.

"There is something called the third-person effect, which means that people tend to overestimate when asked about others' undesirable behavior," Scanlon said.

Rumors also may misconstrue the true scope of the problem, such as in the perception of binge drinking at college.

Students overestimated how often their peers bought term papers online. Scanlon estimated that 90 percent of students claimed they had never taken term papers from the Internet, but 41 percent thought their peers engaged in this "sometimes."

— The Dartmouth (U-WIRE)

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