Table 1.
Overview of all survey participants by country and study level. Shaded countries were not included in the sample for this study due to insufficient data for one or more study levels.
Table 2.
List of academic practices used to assess the participants’ conceptions of rules. The practices are categorised as likely non-compliant, or as likely grey-zone practices if their evaluation depends significantly on contextual information. The exact wording in the description of the practices depended on the educational level and type of data used by the participants. Here we have used the wording presented to upper secondary and Bachelor level participants using quantitative data (see S1 File for details about the wording for all study levels and data uses).
Table 3.
Dedicated academic integrity training (as perceived by participants): “Have you taken courses on rules and/or ethically correct behaviour in relation to the themes introduced above during your current or previous studies?” Share of participants who answered ‘yes’ % (n).
Table 4.
Practical academic integrity training (as perceived by participants): “Have you learned about rules and/or ethically correct behaviour in relation to the themes introduced above through any other method?” Share of participants who answered ‘yes’ %(n).
Fig 1.
Participants’ ethical evaluation of four different paraphrases of a short text, grouped by educational level (Upper secondary (US): n = 1,260, Bachelor (Ba): n = 922, PhD: n = 1,115).
The two answer options “Unacceptable” and “Completely unacceptable” are represented collectively as “Form of unacceptable”. Similarly, the answer options “Acceptable” and “Completely acceptable” are represented as “Form of acceptable”.
Fig 2.
Conceptions of rules regarding citation practice, grouped by study level (Upper secondary (US): n = 1,260, Bachelor (Ba): n = 922, PhD: n = 1,115).
“Please indicate whether you believe the following actions go against the official rules and regulations that apply to you in relation to plagiarism”. “Yes, it is a violation” covers the two answer options “Yes, it is a serious violation” and “Yes, but it is not a serious violation”. “Undecided/it depends” covers the two options “The rules are unclear” and “It depends on the situation”.
Fig 3.
Conceptions of rules regarding collaborative practices, grouped by study level (Upper secondary (US): n = 1,260, Bachelor (Ba): n = 922).
“Please indicate whether you believe the following actions go against the official rules and regulations that apply to you in relation to working with others and assigning authorship”. “Yes, it is a violation” covers the two answer options “Yes, it is a serious violation” and “Yes, but it is not a serious violation”, while “Undecided/it depends” covers the two options: “The rules are unclear” and “It depends on the situation”.
Fig 4.
Conceptions of rules regarding data collection, grouped by study level (Upper secondary (US): n = 1,260, Bachelor (Ba): n = 774, PhD: n = 996).
“Please indicate whether you believe the following actions go against the official rules and regulations that apply to you in relation to plagiarism”. Only Bachelor and PhD level participants who had indicated that they worked with data were asked this question. “Yes, it is a violation” covers the two answer options “Yes, it is a serious violation” and “Yes, but it is not a serious violation”. “Undecided/it depends” covers the two options: “The rules are unclear” and “It depends on the situation”. *Not the exact formulation of the question. See Table 5.
Table 5.
Regression analysis of the conceptions of rules. The level of correct understanding for each action was tested against the five dependent variables: country, age, gender, receiving dedicated training, and receiving practical training. All correlations significant at a 5% level are listed. Cells with no significant correlations are marked with “N.S.”. Odds Ratio (OR) are reported for the two training variables where they are significant. OR for additional variables can be seen in S3 File. (US: n = 1,260; Ba: n = 922; PhD: n = 1,115).
Table 6.
Self-reported questionable behaviour: Shares of participants who answered “Yes, many times”, “Yes, a few times”, or “Yes, once”* to the question: • Upper secondary (US) students: “During your high school education, have you...” • Bachelor (Ba) students:”During your university education, have you…”• PhD students: “During your PhD, have you...” The shaded areas indicate that the question was not presented to these populations.
Table 7.
Regression analysis of self-reported questionable behaviour. Self-reported engagement in each of the six QAPs was tested against the five background variables: country, age, gender, receiving dedicated training, and receiving practical training. All correlations significant at a 5% level are listed. Odds Ratio (OR) are reported for the two training variables where they are significant. OR for additional variables can be seen in S3 File.