Developing and validating a questionnaire to measure university professors’ beliefs regarding plagiarism in thesis writing

Introdoction: Plagiarism in theses has become a prevalent issue in higher education and such an issue has turned to be a matter of concern for educational authorities. To tackle the problem, the very first step is to find out the related influential factors in order to construct a scale so as to investigate the underlying reasons. To this end, the researchers made an attempt to develop a measure with 10 subscales based on an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Methods: The present study is an applied research that adopted a survey method. Overall, using the convenience sampling method 291 Iranian university professors from different universities were recruited. The researcher-made survey included 39 items with 5-point Likert scale (from “To a very small extent” to “To a very great extent”). The data were analyzed using EFA in the SPSS software. Results: The results revealed that 68.39 % of the overall variance is explained by 10 subscales. Further, 20.48 %, 8.733 %, and 7.29 % are explained by research, culture, and education factors. The remaining factors include social environment, economy, motivation, creativity, self-confidence, information technology, and legislation weaknesses. Conclusion: The findings of the present study revealed that all the 10 obtained factors regarding the professors’ viewpoint on plagiarism are compatible with the data and thus it can be an effective tool to investigate Iranian university professors’ views. Additionally, the obtained Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha value demonstrated that the scale can be employed to assess professors’ beliefs regarding plagiarism.