Purpose

Many scholars have recognized the cultural dependency of the concept of plagiarism and have investigated the influence of cultural attitude on university students' plagiarism; however, since the findings are inconsistent and because plagiarism is a major concern in academic institutions in Asia, we were motivated to examine the understanding and prevalence of plagiarism among Canadian and some Asian language students.

Design/methodology/approach

To elicit the data, the questionnaire developed by Maxwell et al. (2008) was adapted for this study. The scale included three sections. In the initial section, the students' background information was inquired. Section two included 10 scenarios, all of which consisted of two levels; understanding and experience. Section three of the scale consisted of five open-ended questions. In fact, the questions intended to complement the survey findings. Finally, in the fourth section, five yes/no questions were asked. Because the respondents could evade answering some open-ended questions, we developed five questions with yes/no answers in order to probe deeper into the participants' answers.

Findings

The results showed significant differences among the participants concerning both understanding and prevalence of plagiarism. Most of the differences were between Canadian and Asian students in that Canadians had a higher level of understanding. They also enjoyed a lower rate of incidence of plagiarism. Nevertheless, further analyses revealed that the students' academic misconduct is probably influenced by other factors including lack of proper education rather than cultural differences.

Social implications

The findings lead us to argue that cultural differences may not be the main source of the prevalence of plagiarism across nations and that Asian language university students plagiarize mainly due to a lack of understanding of the principles of plagiarism. Therefore, Asian universities should take measures to make sure that they promote language students' understanding regarding the misconduct.

Originality/value

Apart from a few studies, no other study has scrutinized plagiarism across cultures. As such, our study attempted to shed more light on the student, especially language students' plagiarism across different nations.

中文翻译：

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跨国高等教育中的抄袭：以语言学生为例

目的

许多学者已经认识到剽窃概念的文化依赖性，并研究了文化态度对大学生剽窃的影响；然而，由于研究结果不一致，而且剽窃是亚洲学术机构的主要关注点，我们有动力调查加拿大和一些亚洲语言学生对剽窃的理解和流行情况。

设计/方法/方法

为了获取数据，Maxwell等人开发了问卷。（2008）适用于这项研究。该量表包括三个部分。在第一部分，询问了学生的背景信息。第二部分包括 10 个情景，均由两个层次组成；理解和经验。量表的第三部分由五个开放式问题组成。事实上，这些问题旨在补充调查结果。最后，在第四部分，提出了五个是/否问题。由于受访者可能会回避回答一些开放式问题，因此我们开发了五个带有是/否答案的问题，以便更深入地探究参与者的答案。

发现

结果显示，参与者对剽窃的理解和流行程度存在显着差异。大部分差异在于加拿大和亚洲学生之间，因为加拿大人的理解水平更高。他们还享有较低的剽窃率。然而，进一步的分析表明，学生的学术不端行为可能受到其他因素的影响，包括缺乏适当的教育，而不是文化差异。

社会影响

研究结果使我们认为，文化差异可能不是各国剽窃盛行的主要来源，而亚洲语言大学的学生剽窃主要是由于对剽窃原则缺乏了解。因此，亚洲大学应采取措施确保他们促进语言学生对不当行为的理解。

原创性/价值

除了一些研究之外，没有其他研究仔细审查过跨文化的剽窃行为。因此，我们的研究试图更多地了解学生，尤其是语言学生在不同国家/地区的抄袭行为。