Relationship between Perfectionism, Attitude towards Research and Plagiarism among University Students

The present study was conducted to find out the relationship between perfectionism, attitude towards research and plagiarism among university students. 360 research students (of BS/ MSc, MS/ MPhil, and PhD) were taken from the universities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. It was hypothesized that there would be a positive relationship between perfectionism, attitude towards research and attitude towards plagiarism among research students. It was also hypothesized that the attitude towards research and attitude towards plagiarism varies across study programs (BS/MSc, MS/MPhil and PhD). Attitude towards research was measured with the help of Attitude Towards Research Scale (ATRS) (Rezaei & Zamani-Miandashti, 2013), plagiarism was measured through the Attitude towards plagiarism Questionnaire (ATPQ-R) (Mavrinac et al., 2010) and perfectionism was measured through the Short Almost Perfect Scale (Rice et al., 2014). The results indicate that there is significantly positive relationship between perfectionism, attitude towards research and attitude towards plagiarism among research students. Plagiarism (plagiarism approval) is significantly high among the private sector universities than the public sector universities. Attitude towards research, plagiarism approval, and subjective norms towards plagiarism is high among PhD students as compared to bachelors and MS research students. Perfectionism significantly predicts the plagiarism approval among research students. The present study findings have important implications in the educational sector.