are confronted with the possibility that their ideas and expressions can be separated, Spigelman finds that they apply different ways of thinking about how textual ownership is decided, about when they can claim a text is their own, and about whether ownership can be based upon the origins of expression or that of ideas (247–48). Similar to one of Spigelman’s study participants (248–49), the writer in the Mother Scenario (#7) responds to these questions by indicating that ideas, not surface expression, are what make a text authentically hers.
Status of the Source
This variable refers to the type of source text that the writer has used. Writers may, as in the Friend’s Paper Scenario (#1), appropriate texts from their friends or, as in the Shakespeare Scenario (#6), borrow ideas from a published text on Shakespearean criticism. This consideration of the status of the source—in other words, the difference in power and status between writers and the types of texts they use—may influence how students and teachers determine the severity of the plagiaristic act. Teachers, in particular, will have to examine the differences, if any do exist, of students who borrow from credible, published texts from those who borrow from the texts of their peers.
Many of the scenarios reveal the assumptions and complex judgments that go into making determinations about plagiarism. Because most of the scenarios do represent the problematic gray area of identifying plagiarism, the variables quickly become messy and overlap with each other. For instance, Cody, the student in the Shakespeare Scenario (#6), can be regarded as acting with a high degree of intentionality (though the scenario does not provide us with a clear description of his desires), as appropriating ideas, and as borrowing from a high status source text. Furthermore, the scenarios rarely provide all of the necessary information in order for teachers and students to make definitive decisions about the writers’ intentions and about what rules of plagiarism and academic misconduct were already established in these hypothetical classrooms.
Study Results and Discussion
Overall, the questionnaire results indicate that teachers are more likely to judge the scenarios as acts of plagiarism. A larger percentage of teachers than students rate seven scenarios as plagiarism, although only four of these are statistically significant. Table 1 below lists these results. For each scenario, a higher percentage suggests more agreement that it represents plagiarism.
Table 1: Percentages of Plagiarism Ratings
| Scenario | Teachers (%) | Students (%) |
| 1* | 100 | 94 |
| 2 | 93 | 85 |
| 3 | 64 | 73 |
| 4* | 52 | 26 |
| 5* | 91 | 70 |
| 6 | 88 | 93 |
| 7* | 86 | 65 |
| 8 | 75 | 81 |
| 9 | 55 | 48 |
| 10 | 100 | 99 |
*Differences are statistically significant (p=.005).
Teachers are also more likely to rate cases of plagiarism more severely, though the differences between the teachers and students are less pronounced. Only two of these scenarios, the Friend’s Paper (#1) and Mother (#7) scenarios, are statistically significant, which can be accounted for by the fact that a larger percentage of students do not regard these cases as plagiarism. Table 2 lists the questionnaire averages for teachers and students. An average closer to 1 indicates that the scenario is either not classified as plagiarism or is marked as a less serious case; an average closer to 5 indicates that the scenario is regarded as a more serious offense.
Table 2: Comparison of Levels of Severity
| Scenario | Teachers | Students | Scenario | Teachers | Students |
| 1*2345 | 3.73.11.81.72.3 | 3.32.82.01.52.3 | 67*8910 | 3.02.72.31.85.0 | 3.22.22.61.84.9 |
*Differences are statistically significant (p=.005).
Below, I discuss the questionnaire results according to three categories, the scenarios that show the most agreement between teachers and students, the scenarios that show the most disparity, and the scenarios that show the most variance among teachers.
Scenarios Showing Most Agreement
Although teachers show a tendency to rate the scenarios as more serious and more likely to represent plagiarism, the results do suggest that teachers and students base their judgments upon a similar set of values. The results indicated in Table 2 confirm a strong consensus between teachers and students. It is also interesting to note that a larger percentage of students rate three scenarios as acts of plagiarism and score them more severely, yet the differences are slight and are not statistically significant. It is encouraging, though not surprising, for example, that the response to the Downloading Scenario (#10) is nearly unanimous. This case represents the most clear-cut example of a writer who intends to deceive her teacher and who completely appropriates the outside source. Furthermore, for a scenario such as the Friend’s Paper Scenario (#1), even though it shows statistical significance for both comparisons, the difference is weak. A vast majority of students (94%) agrees with the 100% of instructors who rate this scenario as plagiarism, and students, similar to teachers, rate this scenario as the second most serious act of plagiarism. A small group of students, however, interpret this writer’s attempts to rewrite her friend’s essay exam and “make it sound more like herself” as a suitable strategy for appropriation.
Scenarios Showing Most Disparity
The four statistically significant scenarios, the Friend’s Paper (#1), the Faulty Paraphrase (#4), the Sight Gag (#5), and the Mother (#7) scenarios, are interesting because they represent the most disparity between how teachers and students respond. These differences suggest how subtle interpretations of the variables, especially intentionality and ideas/expression, play a role in determining these judgments.
For example, the Mother Scenario (#7) suggests that students may privilege the writer’s ownership of ideas. In my discussions with student groups about this scenario, several students—though not all—have claimed that this writer is being responsible, in that she is seeking out editing help from a legitimate source, her mother, the same thing that all expert writers do. Although a statistically significant number of teachers deviate from this judgment, the responses to the online questionnaire hint that some teachers agree with these students’ less text-specific approach to defining plagiarism. One teacher claims that several of the scenarios illustrate students asking for advice on content or on editing, which is “exactly the kind of collaboration that workers will participate in in many job situations.” This teacher acknowledges the difficulty of judging these cases of collaboration, in that they describe exactly what writers do in real professional situations.
Finally, the two scenarios exemplifying examples of citation and paraphrasing, the Faulty Plagiarism (#4) and the Sight Gag (#5) scenarios, also reveal wide divergences of judgments between teachers and students. The fact that 74% of students, as opposed to 48% of teachers, determine the Faulty Plagiarism Scenario (#4) as not a case of plagiarism may suggest that students are willing to overlook the writer’s borrowing of exact phrases and sentence structure as long as he has clearly marked his intention not to deceive the instructor, which he does by citing his encyclopedia source. This writer, therefore, may be signaling he is working in good faith. Of course, the responses to the Sight Gag Scenario (#5), in which the writer adequately paraphrases the source but does not cite it, reverses this logic. In this case, only 30% of students judge this scenario not to be plagiarism, indicating that, for a majority of students, the writer’s failure to identify the source of her definition makes them suspicious about her intentions. As one of the comments on the online questionnaire demonstrates, some teachers respond emphatically to attempts to rationalize writers’ actions in these two scenarios. The teacher writes, “Intentionally lifting a word, phrase or sentence from a source without enclosing these words in quotation marks and citing them is ALWAYS [sic] plagiarism, only slightly less egregious than buying a paper from a term paper site.” Yet, the student responses may be hinting that interpretations
