Abstract

Background: Plagiarism is considered to be the most vicious type of academic misconduct as it constitutes the theft of,intellectual property which is the hallmark of intellectual work. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to explore the,attitude of Faculty members and senior residents toward research as well as plagiarism in a medical school of North India.,Material and Methods: The questionnaire administered to the respondents consisted of three parts. The first part was,related to sociodemographic details along with a number of publications and presentations (oral/poster). The second part,was pertaining to attitude toward research (ATR) and the third part was related to attitude toward plagiarism (ATP). Both,the scales were rated on a 5-point Likert Scale. The positive attitude reflects approval whereas negative attitude expresses,disapproval of Plagiarism. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.
Results: Response rate was 84.21%. A total of,160 respondents comprising 93 faculty members and 67 senior residents constituted our study population. A statistically,significant difference was observed for negative domain of ATP in relation to the department (clinical/para or non-clinical),,whether formal training in medical writing and research ethics received or not and whether they were conducting research,due to personal interest or not (P < 0.05). A significant correlation of ATP score was observed with a number of publications,and presentations and ATR score (P < 0.05).
Conclusions: Training in medical writing and research ethics need to be,incorporated in UG/PG curriculum. Awareness needs to be generated about academic integrity at all educational levels.