An Investigation of Academic Dishonesty among Undergraduates in Four Universities in Laos: Critical Analysis of Students’ Final Reports

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to examine academic dishonesty, which focuses on plagiarism, in final reports written by English-majored students at four different faculties in four public universities and to study the in-text citations and references used in the final reports. A survey research was adopted in the current study, in which 80 final reports written by English-major students between 2014 and 2020 at four faculties—the faculty of languages (Souphanouvong University), the faculty of linguistics and humanities (Savannakhet University), the faculty of education (National University of Laos), and the faculty of education (Champasak University)—were collected through simple random selection. The Plagiarism Checker X was used to analyse and detect plagiarism in the students' final reports, and the number of plagiarized words and improper in-text citations and referencing are presented in the frequency. The results showed that 30,819 (67%) out of 45,999 words written by students at the faculty of languages (Souphanouvong University) were plagiarized, followed by 13,219 (63%) out of 20,982 words created by students at the faculty of education (Champasak University), and 27,735 (66%) out of 42,022 words were also cited as plagiarism at the faculty of linguistics and humanities (Savannakhet University). In contrast, only 9,674 (36%) out of 27,123 words written by students at the faculty of education (National University of Laos) were plagiarized. Another key finding of the current study is that 623 (76%) out of 926 references in the 80 manuscripts were checked and found to be inappropriately referenced, while 966 in-text citations were checked and showed that 45% (434 citations) were found to be incorrect.