A survey on knowledge of post- graduate students of Shaheed Chamran University of Ahwaz of plagiarism and its influencing factors

The purpose of this study is to assess the knowledge of post graduate students of Shaheed Chamran University of Ahwaz of instances of plagiarism and its influencing factors in order to present solutions to avoid plagiarism in universities. This research was a descriptive-analytic type and the data gathering tool was a researcher-made questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaire was measured through content validity technique, and its reliability was measured by calulating Cronbach’s Alpha which rendered an alpha of 0.8 (The research population included all the post graduate students of Shaheed Chamran University. Applying the Morgan table, the sample size was chosen as 354 cases from the statistical population (N= 4765). Findings of the research indicated that knowledge of students of instances of plagiarism is normal. Also, in view of students under study, effective factors on plagiarism are in order of priority: upbringing, economic &, technological, social, cultural, and educational. Inadequate proficiency of students on all aspects of the research subject, financial capability and giving money to the person in order to do research or project, document-oriented, delinquency in doing homework and delay in those and not learning the correct way of writing a scientific paper in universityies to students were identified as the most important reasons to plagiarism.