reflection essay about avoiding plagiarism

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• Published: 30 June 2015

Responding to plagiarism using reflective means

• Nikunj Dalal 1  

International Journal for Educational Integrity volume  11 , Article number:  4 ( 2015 ) Cite this article

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Academic integrity violations have become widespread and pervasive in the university. The manner in which we respond to such violations is important. The prevalent approaches based on procedures, policies, appeals, and sanctions are seen as inadequate and may often be viewed as punitive or disciplinary. Even if they may bring about desired changes in behavior, it is not clear whether the behavioral changes are based on fear of punishment or due to transformative inner learning. Drawing upon reflective learning theories, this paper reports and reflects on the exploratory use of reflective means in two courses over four semesters to deal with students who had plagiarized on their class assignments. As there is little prior work in terms of methodology or research or practice addressing reflective approaches dealing with plagiarism, the goal of this study is to explore the feasibility and promise of integrally combining two reflective practices – an initial dialogue between instructor and student and a reflective essay subsequently written by the student. (Anti-plagiarism software was used to help detect plagiarism.) The main finding of this study is that such an approach is sensible, feasible, and promising. The reflective approach calls for mindfulness, empathy, and skillful dialogue on the part of the instructor and appears to encourage critical self-reflection in the student. Innovative reflective approaches warrant further research for inclusion as significant elements of a wise and holistic institutional response to academic integrity violations. Self-reflection may not only reduce the incidence of plagiarism and other academic integrity violations but may also be conducive to the growth of practical wisdom and inner change that spills over into other dimensions of integrity. Implications for institutional practices and further research are discussed.

Academic integrity violations such as plagiarism, copying, unauthorized collaboration, cheating on examinations, and unauthorized access to examinations have become widespread and pervasive in the modern university setting, aided undoubtedly by the easy availability and proliferation of various technologies (see e.g., McCabe, 2005 ; Park, 2003 ; Campbell, 2006 among many other studies). While there may be methodological issues in accurately measuring the rates of prevalence of plagiarism and other violations of academic integrity, discerning leaders of academia too have echoed such observations. For example, according to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey in association with the Chronicle of Higher Education of 1,055 presidents of colleges and universities (public and private) in the U.S., the majority of college presidents (55%) say plagiarism has increased in the past decade (of which 89% believe that computers and the internet have played a major role in this trend) and a large proportion (40%) believe that it has stayed the same over the past 10 years while a small minority of college presidents (2%) think that plagiarism has decreased over the past decade (Parker et.al 2011 ).

Although the standard institutional response by universities to cheating has been to articulate academic integrity policies that aim at behavior modification through information, procedures, and sanctions, there is growing recognition that holistic approaches that integrate policies, practices, information providing and learning strategies are needed to address the gamut and complexity of academic integrity issues including plagiarism (MacDonald and Carroll, 2006 ; Bretag et al. 2011 .) It is in this larger context that approaches focusing on empathy, reflection, dialogue, and understanding of the prevalent digital culture of young adults are likely to find a place.

There is increasing evidence from researchers that reflective learning and reflective practices play an important role in higher education (Brockbank & McGill, 2007 ). However, there has been little research or reporting on the use of reflection in responding to academic integrity violations in general and plagiarism in particular. A detailed search (carried out by the author) of handbooks of academic integrity at leading universities in the U.S. revealed little or no mention of keywords “reflection” and “dialogue”. Although some schools do offer an option of writing a reflection paper, it seems to be treated as a sanction along with probation and other disciplinary actions.

Drawing upon reflective learning theories, this paper reports and reflects on the exploratory use of reflective means by the author (who was the instructor) to deal with students who appeared to have plagiarized on their class assignments in two information systems courses taught during four semesters. Specifically, the study explores the feasibility and promise of combining two reflective practices: a dialogue between instructor and student and a subsequent reflective essay written by a plagiarizing student. Given that there has been little prior work in terms of methodology or research or practice addressing reflective approaches dealing with plagiarism, this study is probably among the first of its kind to explore the use of reflective dialogue in conjunction with reflective essay for this purpose.

This paper is organized as follows. The first section introduces reflection theories and reflective practices, which are then viewed in the context of academic integrity facilitation. The second section describes procedural details of the reflective approach used. The next section reports and reflects on the study’s findings, which is followed by a discussion of the implications of this approach for institutional practices and future research. The paper concludes with some final thoughts.

Reflection theories and practices

Often likened to “looking at oneself into a mirror,” reflection has generally been considered an essential aspect of self-understanding, contemplation, and meditation in philosophies of life. However, reflection is also a common mental learning activity that we carry out when we try to make sense and meaning from daily life experiences. It involves implicitly testing assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge in the light of experiences, which may result in new learning as well as changed perspectives on life. Boud, Keogh and Walker’s 1985 model of reflection in learning (Boud et al. 2013 ) has two components: a) experience and b) reflection of the experience. They use the term experience as consisting of “the total response of a person to a situation or event: what he or she thinks, does, feels, and concludes at the time and immediately thereafter (p.18).” The subsequent reflective activity based upon the experience is when people attempt to recapture the experience, think about it, mull over it, and learn from it. Although we tend to reflect almost automatically, Boud et al. ( 2013 ) believe that conscious reflection enables us to bring unconscious thinking and feelings into the light of awareness, which enhances learning. In the context of education, reflection may be defined per Hatcher and Bringle ( 1997 ) as “the intentional consideration of an experience in light of particular learning objectives (p.153).”

The Transformative Learning Theory by Jack Mezirow of Columbia University focuses on perspective transformation that arises from reflection on the “Why” of an experience in contrast to instrumental learning, which focuses on the “What” and the “How” (Mezirow, 1991 ). Transformative learning attempts to purposively and rationally question and deconstruct the learner’s prior assumptions, values, beliefs, feelings, and biases in the interest of personal and intellectual growth of the learner (Cranton 1994 ). According to Mezirow ( 1991 ), transformative learning can be a life-changing experience that starts with a “disorienting dilemma” – a choice of two alternatives – which must be understood and resolved. The dilemma may be triggered by some life crisis or situation and one may have to decide on whether to continue in the existing worldview or paradigm or underlying belief system, or to reflect, deconstruct, learn, and transform to a different level of understanding. Mezirow ( 1991 ) theorized that the disorienting dilemma can lead to self-examination with accompanying feelings of shame or guilt, after which one may go through a series of stages involving self-knowledge acquisition, reflection, and exploration, and can end with a new perspective reintegrated into one’s life. Mezirow’s theory has transformed the field of adult learning and is finding applications in many other domains.

Reflection in practice is referred to as reflective practice, which is about “paying critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively. This leads to developmental insight (Bolton 2010 ).” Starting with the notion of Reflective Practice (Schön, 1983 ) by Donald Schön in his book “The Reflective Practitioner” in 1983 and followed up by numerous other theorists, reflective practice has now been widely accepted and used by individuals and organizations, particularly in the teaching and health professions. There are numerous forms of reflective practices all embodying the notion of reflection. Reflective essays and reflective dialogues are two key reflective practices introduced next.

A reflective essay is a form of writing in which the writer reflects and contemplates on his or her experiences. A reflective essay may be a personal record of thoughts, feelings and experiences, an evaluation of strengths and weaknesses, or a summary of meaningful learning from those experiences. While a reflective essay is often used as part of a writing or learning portfolio (e.g., Wade and Yarbrough, 1996 ), there appears to have been little research on its use as an academic integrity tool.

Another reflective practice is to engage in reflective dialogue. Simply defined as “thinking together” (Isaacs, 1999 ), a reflective dialogue is an objective inquiry in which self-awareness, intuition, reflection, and listening in a spirit of fellowship are key elements (Bohm, 1996 ). This notion of dialogue is clearly more than a discussion or a meaningful conversation or interchange of opinions between two or more persons; participants are also engaged in observing their own thought, preconceptions, assumptions, and beliefs during the dialogue. (The term dialogue will be used interchangeably with reflective dialogue henceforth with the understanding that what is meant is reflective dialogue.) This type of dialogue draws upon the inquiry traditions of philosophers such as Socrates (Kahn, 1998 ), Bohm ( 1996 ), and Krishnamurti ( 1996 ) and later theoretical underpinnings laid out by organizational management theorists such as Senge ( 1990 ) and Isaacs ( 1999 ), founder of the MIT Dialogue project, among others. A participant in such a dialogue learns to listen to the other without resistance; suspends or becomes aware of their assumptions, images and biases; is ready to explore underlying causes to get to deeper questions and issues; creatively envisions new possibilities; and creates a collective flow (Isaacs, 1999 ). There is no established formula or protocol for conducting a reflective dialogue and there appears to be a lot of scope for creativity and spontaneity. Why? “Because the nature of Dialogue is exploratory, its meaning and its methods continue to unfold. No firm rules can be laid down for conducting a Dialogue because its essence is learning - not as the result of consuming a body of information or doctrine imparted by an authority, nor as a means of examining or criticizing a particular theory or programme, but rather as part of an unfolding process of creative participation … (Bohm et al. 1991 )”

According to numerous case studies documented by Isaacs ( 1999 ), the dialogue process may generate new transformative insights and perspectives in the minds of participants. In the context of learning, Brockbank and McGill ( 2007 ) have observed how dialogues can generate perception shifts by challenging existing assumptions. In their words (p. 45), “For us dialogue that is reflective, and enables critically reflective learning, engages the person at the edge of their knowledge, their sense of self and the world as experienced by them. Thus their assumptions about knowledge, themselves and their world is challenged.”

In the context of plagiarism and other academic integrity violations, it would appear then that being caught in a plagiarism situation is a “disorienting dilemma” for a student. A dialogue between an instructor or counselor and the student may enable better listening of one another, perhaps in a less judgmental manner, throw more light on the situation, and along with writing a reflective essay, the whole process may help a student “learn” from their mistakes and transform to a different level of understanding of originality and authenticity. Can these reflective practices really help? The focus of this study was to explore three questions: Is it sensible and feasible to implement a reflective approach for dealing with plagiarism in a course? What does it entail? Can it show promise? The next section describes the use of a reflective approach.

Reflective approach

The author has used a reflective approach with minor variations for four consecutive long semesters starting Spring 2013 to deal with cases of plagiarism in two information systems courses. Both courses included five to seven homework assignments and a project. Plagiarism cases were detected with the help of plagiarism detection software from Turnitin ( http://turnitin.com ), which is integrated with the Desire2learn learning platform of the university.

This overall approach had the following components:

1. Building student awareness

The students are informed in the syllabus about integrity violations and sanctions, which is discussed during the first week of classes. The fact that plagiarism detection software is being used is reinforced as follows:

You are expected to be aware of all kinds of academic dishonesty. Please check with the instructor if you have any doubts or questions. In particular, any work found to be similar to that on existing websites or similar to work done by current or former students in the past will be considered for plagiarism. This will be checked by means of suitable software. Participating in a behavior that violates academic integrity (e.g., unauthorized collaboration, plagiarism, multiple submissions, cheating on examinations, fabricating information, helping another person cheat, unauthorized advance access to examinations, altering or destroying the work of others, fraudulently altering academic records, and similar behaviors) will result in a sanction. Sanctions include: lowering of a letter grade, receiving a failing grade on an assignment, examination or course, receiving a notation of a violation of academic integrity (F!) on your transcript, and being suspended from the University. You have the right to appeal the charge. (Contact details provided here).

Building such awareness in the student early in the semester is helpful and fair. It not only deters students from cheating behaviors but may also mitigate the sense of ignorance, indignation, or unfairness often displayed by students who are caught later in the semester in situations where they have not received prior explicit information on what constitutes academic integrity. The next step in this approach also has similar goals.

2. Providing learning and self-assessment materials

As part of the course content in the first week of the semester, students are pointed to various sources of materials on academic honesty and are expected to understand the meaning and different shades of plagiarism. This is particularly important as students may commit unintentional plagiarism. For example, it was found that some students considered it acceptable to modify a submission of a student from a previous semester to some degree and present it as their own work. Such misinterpretations were brought to light with the help of an open-book miniquiz, administered online at the end of the first week, which contained questions used to assess their understanding of plagiarism.

Students are further required to sign an integrity pledge (which was incorporated in Fall 2014) stating the following:

INTEGRITY PLEDGE: “All my work for this course will be original and independently done. Sentences copied and pasted from the Internet will be placed in quotes and appropriately cited. I understand that special software very sensitive in plagiarism detection (with respect to Internet sources and other student submissions from now and in the past) is used for this course, and if any instance of plagiarism or some other violation is detected, I will get an F* or an appropriately lowered grade on this course.”

3. Responding to plagiarism – the dialogue

Each case of suspected plagiarism detected by Turnitin is investigated by the instructor. (Sometimes, a high unoriginality score may appear due to causes other than plagiarism).

For every prima facie case of plagiarism suggested by the software, the student is given a blank score on their screen and a comment to meet the instructor the following week during office hours. During the meeting in the office, the instructor treats each student on a case-by-case basis as individuals. Most students deny they have “cheated” but every opportunity is provided to them during a difficult dialogue with the instructor to unfold and own up to their mistake. Instead of being branded as plagiarists, they get a chance to discover their own foibles in a relatively non-threatening space.

In the author’s experience, in many cases, the initial meeting would start with student denials, followed by acknowledgement and justification, but over time, for some students, it would take a critically reflective turn followed by what seemed to be tears of remorse and a sense of understanding. Each dialogue unfolded differently and spontaneously because each student and each interaction was different. Even the instructor’s frame of mind was not the same for every interaction. Some of the critical questions explored by the instructor with the student were: Why did you do what you did? What are the implications of taking someone’s work and presenting it as one’s own? How would you do it differently and why? Why are sanctions necessary and why they should be viewed as learning experiences? What is the importance of authenticity and originality in learning? How do such actions spill over into daily life?

Students are then informed about the sanction they will receive, which may be a zero on the assignment (or in some cases, a lowering of their grade) but are also given a choice on how to deal with their integrity violation: attend an integrity violation session facilitated by an integrity counselor or to write a reflective essay. The next step applies to students who opt for the reflective essay.

4. Responding to plagiarism – the reflective essay

The reflective essay is meant to encourage honesty and awareness of thinking. It read as follows:

Reflective essay

You have chosen to take up this reflective assignment, which has the potential to be life-changing if done with care, mindfulness, and attention.

Nobody is perfect and we all make mistakes. But can we truly learn from our mistakes? Write a short personalized essay (generally about a page but there is no max. length restriction) on being an authentic and original learner and what authenticity, originality, and integrity mean to you in academics and life going forward. You may also include your observations about your thinking processes while writing the essay. Be honest in your reflections and attempt to think and feel with a fresh mind. Do not worry about what this instructor will think or how he might respond because you will not be judged or evaluated even though your submission will be read attentively. I do not judge “you”; I look only at individual actions. We are all capable of right actions when we act from right understanding.

(Upload your submission to the special submissions box calling it “Reflective Essay” anytime from now on but before the last day of classes and send me an email when you have done so. After submitting the essay, you can modify it as many times as you wish until semester-end, and upload multiple versions. I will read your final version at semester-end.)

5. Reading the reflective essays and reflecting on the process

The instructor at this stage reads the reflective essays, gets a sense of the spirit of learning they embody, reflects on the entire process, and assesses the effectiveness of this reflective approach, making changes as needed for the future.

Given that it is difficult to find reflective models suggested by prior research or practice in dealing with cases of plagiarism in a university environment, the goal of this study was to explore the feasibility and promise of a reflective approach. The main finding is that the reflective approach described in the previous section makes sense, is feasible to implement, and has the potential for numerous learning benefits. A limitation of this study is that with the small sample sizes involved, and the changes made in the dialogue process and reflective essay specifications each semester resulting from new learning during each trial, the study should be considered exploratory; it would have been premature to conduct studies looking for hard effectiveness data without first experientially exploring and understanding reflective processes for this new use. Nevertheless, several observations can be made from this study that can point to future research and practice directions.

The number of students detected to have deliberately plagiarized relative to the total number of students enrolled were 16 in 149, 4 in 133, 3 in 140, and 3 in 92 in Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, and Fall 2014 respectively for a total of 26 in 514. So the detected plagiarism rate was slightly over 10% in Spring 2013 and dropped off to the 2 to 3% range in subsequent semesters. Though the detection mechanism (Turnitin) and the assignments largely remained the same, it is not clear what factors caused a drop-off in plagiarism rates. (Three cases of inadvertent plagiarism were let off with a cautionary note and were not included in this report).

During the dialogue, all 26 students admitted to plagiarism (some later than others). Given the nature of the assignments, it was clear (and supported by software results) that the copying was from prior student submissions, where inadvertent plagiarism (e.g., from poor academic writing skills) is unlikely or impossible. All 26 students received zeroes on the assignment in question and four students also received a lower overall grade in the course for the severity and egregiousness of their plagiarism. All of them opted to write a reflective essay instead of attending an integrity violation resolution meeting that would have gone on their academic record in the university. Other than one student who copied textbook definitions of plagiarism and integrity from an Internet source without attribution (!), the other students had low Turnitin scores (<10%) of similarity with other sources on their reflective essays, suggestive of original writing.

The initial dialogue with the student was seen as very important in setting the tone for the student’s subsequent reflection. Being confronted by a disorienting dilemma, consistent with the research of Park ( 2003 ), many students would start by denying they had plagiarized at all and later, when they knew they were discovered, would rationalize or make light of their actions until experiencing feelings of grief or shame. Getting them to focus on their “wrong” actions that brought them to this situation without being perceived as accusatory and judgmental of the entire person required mindfulness on the part of the instructor. It was important for the instructor to be able to engage in reflective dialogue listening to each student as a unique person facing a unique situation and to respond spontaneously without following a patterned procedure. The importance of the dialogue interaction is suggested in comments such as the following, made by students in their essays.

I felt very ashamed and at the same time scared while standing outside your room, waiting for my turn to speak with you. But you made that horrible experience very pleasant by speaking in a very positive way and patiently listening to my explanation. That interaction with you has completely changed a part of me in a positive way and made me look at things in a new perspective. (Student 4, SAD, Spring 2013).

There were instances when I … chose a shortcut to success. After my interaction with you I realized the gravity of the mistake I did and had regretted (sic) for it. (Student 8, SAD, Spring 2013).

Many students pointed out the importance of authenticity and original work. This type of acknowledgement is reflected in comments such as the following.

Honesty, being authentic and original is one of the must-have virtues. (Student 21, ERP, Spring 2014).

The primary objective is learning and more importantly being original. … Primarily, what many of them and even I failed to understand is that you are not cheating the instructor you are cheating yourself. The instructor has nothing to lose, you will be the loser. (Student 10, SAD, Spring 2013).

Many students expressed a sense of regret about their action and a sense of learning from the experience. This was coupled in several cases with a sense of gratefulness at being provided this opportunity. Some suggestive comments follow.

I am not proud of this, but ashamed and humbled by this and something that I might never forget in my entire life. (Student 12, SAD, Spring 2013).

I felt guilty and had (sic) decided never to get into any such situation where my integrity comes into question. (Student 8, SAD, Spring 2013).

I have positively taught myself to treat this situation as ‘The First and The Last’. (Student 25, Fall 2014).

First I would like to thank the course instructor for being considerate about my mistake, giving me this opportunity to rectify myself and learn from the mistake. (Student 22, ERP, Spring 2014).

Many students attempted to justify their behavior in some sense before acknowledging their mistakes. Students from other countries brought cultural differences (Sutherland-Smith, 2008 ) and other factors in their understanding of academic integrity, suggested in the following comments.

I am not sure if it is the pressures of being in the campus away from family, coping with the coursework, age, cultural or language barriers that caused it but I always felt I wasn’t welcome. And it’s definitely not that I did not try. (Student 21, ERP, Spring 2014).

I was short of time in submitting the assignment, and I referred [to] my friend’s assignment. (Student 26, ERP, Fall 2014).

Now considering that, I am from (another country) and since my childhood I have being seeing lots of people, who are corrupt and now everyone thinks like it is a part and parcel of life. And this very thing has a deep effect on me because I have seen lots of corrupt people (Politicians, Police, Government employees, even people in my Father’s Office) making huge profits and having no regrets whatsoever. (Student 17, ERP, Fall 2013).

That day I thought it was just an assignment, and who would care about an assignment (because back in my home country, assignments were not a big thing, only exams were the prominent grading factors). (Student 12, SAD, Spring 2013).

For some students, the learning extended to observing other facets of themselves and also going beyond academic integrity to fairness and doing the right thing in life. Observations reflecting this sense include the following.

All of this has made me a better person now and has made me put in thought in the smallest of activities I perform. (Student 15, SAD, Spring 2013).

During my undergraduate studies I had been never serious about learning new things or doing something innovative or out of the box. …I started realizing the importance of gaining knowledge instead of just gaining a degree. (Student 6, SAD, Spring 2013).

One of the best takeaways of this semester would be that I would always take the path that is right no matter how difficult or hard it might be. (Student 8, SAD, Spring 2013).

I have always tried to abide and inculcate these virtues in my life and I expect to keep them with me for the rest of my life as well. (Student 21, ERP, Spring 2014).

The approach discussed in this paper provides an opportunity for a student caught cheating to acknowledge and face their action and to reflect and learn from it. It can also be a significant learning experience for the instructor or counselor in terms of learning to listen and observe human nature. The major finding of this study is that this novel approach based on combining reflective dialogue and a reflective essay to deal with a student who has indulged in deliberate plagiarism is feasible, promising, and befitting of future research. The use of appropriate anti-plagiarism software is very helpful as it leaves the instructor with little doubt that they are dealing with a definite case of plagiarism. A typical academic sanction for academic plagiarism may be necessary but is, in the opinion of this author, generally perceived by students as punitive and disciplinary. However, as an element of a holistic approach that encourages self-reflection, the sanction itself may be seen as a transformative learning experience -- a process conducive to the growth of practical wisdom that may create lasting change that spills over into other domains. The dialogic process by which self-reflection is encouraged and allowed to grow is as (if not more) important than a specific outcome in a given situation as it can be the seed for future transformative learning.

The instructor or integrity counselor’s understanding of this process is critical for the reflective approach to work. It calls for mindfulness, empathy, and skillful dialogue on the part of the instructor and encourages critical self-reflection in the student. The reflective approach places greater demands of time, attention, and effort on the part on the instructor or counselor. It calls for critical reflection on the part of the instructors, the counselors, and the university administrators on their own preconceived assumptions, beliefs, and standards.

This study has several implications for future research and practice. First, there is a diversity of definitions and frameworks for reflection and reflective practice but there is no single right way to implement a reflective practice (Hickson, 2011 ) and hence there is scope for creativity, innovation, and experimentation in determining best reflective practices for dealing with plagiarism. Second, research is needed to systematically examine the conditions under which such reflective approaches as described in this paper are effective and how they may foster honesty (McCabe and Pavela, 2004 ). A few of many questions that can be posed: What is an appropriate protocol for conducting a dialogue, if a formalized protocol is needed in the first place? (Given the spontaneous unfolding in a dialogue, a protocol if any may have to be loosely structured and flexible.) Will it be helpful to have a second subsequent dialogue after the submission of the reflective essay? Can the directions for writing the reflective essay be improved and expanded to include other emotions? An important question is how to measure and assess the effectiveness of any reflective approach for this purpose. Transformative learning theory (Mezirow 2000 ) suggests that the process of perspective transformation has three dimensions: psychological (changes in understanding of the self), convictional (revision of belief systems), and behavioral (changes in lifestyle). It may be useful to subsequently survey or investigate students to look for psychological, convictional, and behavioral changes as a result of having experienced a reflective approach due to their plagiarism.

At the institutional level, it will be useful to examine the role of such approaches in a more holistic context of academic integrity violation. Academic integrity counselors or facilitators are meant to help a student realize the consequences of their decisions and have been trained in university procedures. As commendable as such efforts are, surveys in multiple countries have found that the efficacy of such policies are still not clear and student support and understanding of the policies is low (e.g., Glendinning, 2014 ). Should dealing with plagiarism be the role of a course instructor or an academic integrity counselor? Should the proposed approach (or a modified version of it) be used as a replacement for or in conjunction with standard procedural approaches of dealing with academic integrity violations? How can instructors or counselors be trained in holding dialogues with a student to encourage reflection? To address such questions, we need more experimentation and research with reflective means for academic integrity issues.

Academic integrity violations have become widespread and pervasive in the university. The manner in which we respond to such violations is important. The prevalent approaches based on sanctions may often be viewed as punitive and while they may bring about desired changes in behavior, it is not clear whether the behavioral changes are based on fear of punishment or transformative inner learning. If change arises from fear of detection and fear of punishment, a person may cheat again in situations where they perceive they are unlikely to be caught or punished. However, if change arises from within, the student is unlikely to fall into the trap of quick illegitimate short-cuts. Reflective practices by a student or an instructor working with a student on their act of plagiarism have the potential to produce inner change that leads to original work by a student and other changes in outward behavior that are long lasting and harmonious.

As educators and administrators, we must critically reflect on the effectiveness of current approaches in dealing with academic integrity from the perspectives of: teaching versus preaching (Pfatteicher, 2001 ), creative experimentation and innovation versus application of institutionalized policies and procedures, and the use of character development and critical thinking strategies versus behavior modification strategies (Roberts-Cady 2008 ). Clearly, none of the choices mentioned earlier are binary; rather plagiarism as recognized by many academics (see e.g., Macdonald and Carroll, 2006 ) is a complex multi-faceted phenomenon that requires a holistic approach, beyond just a policy of information, deterrence, and sanctions.

It appears that the standard institutional approach emphasizes behavior modification through information, policies, procedures, processes and external sanctions (typically punitive or disciplinary), but lacks an adequate focus on reflection, inner understanding, and dialogue in an integrated manner. Hence, consistent with the call for wisdom in understanding the importance of academic integrity and ethics to higher education (Bretag et al. 2011 ), policies and practices that emphasize reflection, mindfulness, and transformative learning deserve a place in a holistic institutional framework of academic integrity.

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The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their helpful comments.

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Nikunj Dalal is Professor of Management Science and Information Systems in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University, USA. His doctorate is in the area of information systems and his current research is in the areas of practical wisdom and mindfulness in relationship to technology, learning, and philosophical issues in information systems. He has presented and published research on dialogues, wisdom computing, and online learning.

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Dalal, N. Responding to plagiarism using reflective means. Int J Educ Integr 11 , 4 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-015-0002-6

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• Reflective dialogue
• Self-reflection
• Academic integrity
• Mindfulness
• Practical wisdom
• Transformative learning
• Reflective learning
• Reflective writing

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Using Sources, Avoiding Plagiarism, and Academic Honesty

A key expectation of academic work is that what you submit is your own, and that you appropriately source words and ideas that are not your own. Since academic writing involves building on the ideas of others, knowing how to integrate that material with your own thinking is a fundamental skill for success. Writers who simply haven’t practiced that skill may find themselves submitting papers with unintentional plagiarism (which is by far the most common). The resources below explain what plagiarism is, and how to avoid it through careful use of source material, rhetoric, and citations. Please feel free to email us with any thoughts or suggestions!

What is Plagiarism?

Put simply, plagiarism is when you claim the words or ideas of others as your own. Since all work you submit during an academic program is presumed to be yours, even leaving out a citation can lead to unintentional plagiarism. Avoiding plagiarism means knowing how to integrate sources correctly into your writing, understanding the rules of the style guide you’re using, and having a big-picture understanding of academic honesty: the “why” behind all those seemingly arbitrary rules.

• Antioch University Plagiarism Policy

Integrating Sources

Any time you use someone else’s words or ideas (which you do in most academic papers), you need to be careful to track them through your research and drafting phases, attribute them in your writing phases, and ensure they are correctly cited during your final polishing phases. Integrating sources well starts with research–taking good notes, actively synthesizing as you read, and making sure you put other people’s words in quotes in your notes are all ways to avoid accidental plagiarism down the line. As you start to write, you’ll want to use quotations, paraphrases, and syntheses to describe other people’s ideas. Each integrates sources in a different way, and academic writers need to know how to do all three, and when each is appropriate. As you finish your paper, you need to able to include citations in a consistent and appropriate format so that readers of your work can locate the source you used for a given idea. In academic writing, it is expected that your work fits into an ongoing conversation; citing your sources helps your readers know who contributed before you, and how you used their ideas. Reading and Doing Research

• Active Reading Strategies
• Critical Reading Exercises
• Gathering Information
• Evaluating Research Generally
• Evaluating Empirical Research
• The Art of Integrating Sources
• Using Quotations
• A Short Guide to Paraphrasing

Style and Citations

Regardless of your field and specialty, you can rest assured that you will need to cite your sources and abide by the rules of a style guide. These resources focus on helping you manage those expectations, especially around the particulars of things like APA style.

• Citation Managers
• Antioch Seattle MA Psych Style Guidelines
• An Overview of APA Style
• Common Mistakes in APA Style

Other Resources:

• Visit the American Psychological Association website for updated information regarding APA style and formatting guidelines for writing in the psychology and social sciences.
• Visit the Modern Language Association website for updated information regarding MLA style and formatting guidelines for writing in the humanities.

  Academic Honesty

Part of academic writing is also managing your time and working sufficiently in advance to do your work well. If you are working at the last minute or find yourself committed, you may find yourself tempted to leave out a citation, to appropriate a quote, or even to copy and paste text from a source without attribution. While everyone understands the desperation that can lead to academic dishonesty, the choice to engage in intentional plagiarism is a serious breach of conduct with serious consequences. In an academic program, it can lead to your being put on academic probation or kicked out of the University. Beyond student writing, plagiarism can cause you to lose all credibility in your field and destroy your academic or professional career.

Healthy Approaches to Plagiarism: A Collaborative Response

Dorothy Capers,  AUS PsyD Student & Anne Maxham, Ph.D., Director of Writing Support   Plagiarism today goes beyond the flagrant taking of another’s piece of writing and turning it as your own. With the internet, facile copying and pasting of others’ words can wreak havoc on your academic integrity.

Caveat Scriptor!

(Writer Beware!)

Overview: Plagiarism is fundamentally the act of taking others’ words and using them as your own. The range of what identifies as plagiarism is complex: it may be intentional or unintentional; it may be in the form of paraphrases without citing the source, or word for word (seven or more words in sequence from the original source); or padding your writing with longer passages without citations. Being charged with “academic dishonesty” or “plagiarism” is a gut-wrenching experience that no student wants to risk. The impact of being questioned about your authenticity can result in losing confidence as a writer and even have you doubt your purpose in studying at the university. Beyond the emotional effects, other consequences can be dire, and sometimes result in failing the class, being put on academic probation, and worst of all expulsion from the university. All writers need to take precautions and make efforts to ensure that your writing is “all yours” and that you properly cite others’ words and ideas. One scenario of why it can happen to anyone: Many of us now compose directly on the computer and frequently have multiple documents opened at any given time. We “read” to find information to use in our writing. Frequently, we jump from online articles to our own document, copying and pasting material. At times, we’re writing papers with quick deadlines, and we might rush through this all-important step of first understanding the article content. Rather than fully “digesting texts,” we read for important information and key points to include in the paper. Our notes become lifted passages from texts rather than summarizing in our own words. We research and read for “context” rather than the “content”; that is, we read to finish our writing rather than fully understanding the topic or content. What you can do: To avoid unintentional plagiarism, stop long enough in your reading to think about what the author is saying. Put it in your own words. There’s an inherent danger in copying text and pasting into your own notes. And in doing so, writers can naively create a “fertile environment” for plagiarism to occur.  And it happens not just in academia. Take a look at what happened to well-known authors, and the consequences can ruin a career. Or musicians and the long lawsuits that follow. Remember, James Frey and the scandal after Oprah had selected his Million Little Pieces as one of her “reads”? Oprah felt betrayed and used. Her anger was palpable when she publicly lambasted him in her program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewC-KIe5qng http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2011/1208/5-famous-plagiarism-and-fraud-accusations-in-the-book-world/Alex-Haley And recently, Neil Gorsuch was accused of plagiarizing parts of his book: http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/gorsuch-writings-supreme-court-236891 So, we’ve developed this resource to help students take proactive measures to be academically honest. Before we move into the nitty gritty, we have some fundamentals:

• First, create a “working bibliography” of your resources. Put a number or a letter next to each and use that notation next to your quotes & paraphrases. That way, the sources for all quotes/paraphrases are identified.
• Cite all direct quotes, paraphrases, statistics, and unique ideas. Take the extra time to put quotation marks around words that are not yours. And don’t forget to post the page number of all direct quotes.
• direct quotes = citation
• paraphrases = citation
• statistics = citation
• unique concepts = citation
• when in doubt = citation
• If you’re not sure, you should seek writing support with your writing center or the VWC.

The Academic Conversation For those who want to write original work, learning how to enter the academic conversation is fundamental. While the academy is a place for active debate, most of us read materials given to us as passive “voyeurs” of a text. Of course, this is saying something about the implicit/explicit power dynamic between the faculty member and the student. Do we read to highlight what we think the faculty member wants us to read? Or do we read to wrestle with ideas? Frankly, given the reality that most of us read multiple texts each week, we’re lucky if we “digest” even one text.  The fact that most of us read – or submit a text— seldom questioning its content, style, or the intent of the author shows that we may be disempowered in the academic enterprise. Many students don’t realize that writing forces a reader to “digest” the material and to summarize as well as validate assertions by referring to the experts. So, active reading is essential in bringing the reader into the discourse. Since there are deep and multiple connections between reading and writing, we all need to learn and use strategies of active, critical reading (See the VWC Resources: “ Active Reading Strategies” and “ Critical Reading Exercises” )

If we think about academic reading and writing as a conversation, students have to carry the researchers forward in the conversation, even those with opposing views. Writing a paper is entering the conversation in an attempt to inform the reader of your unique learning through summarizing, paraphrasing, and citing other researchers. Ways to ensure Academic Authenticity: Validating that your writing is authentically yours and accurately reflecting your understanding of the topic begins early in your writing process.  Before writing, verify that you understand the assignment. Ask questions and request examples from the faculty member. Remember, what your instructors wants in an assignment is most important for your success. If you don’t understand, ask classmates and go to the writing center for additional support. Taking Notes: Take “real notes”: Don’t just lift full lines or passages from your reading. Be sure to write all notes in your own words, or put quotes around texts. If you’ve paraphrased, you still need to cite. So, put ( ) and the author, date, pg number. Defining the goals of your literature review will guide both your reading and your note-taking.   Peg Single Boyle, author of Demystifying Dissertation Writing (2009), offers a clear approach to “Citable Notetaking”:

• Pre-read your articles before taking notes
• Keep track of what’s summarized, paraphrased, or quoted.
• Choose  consistent formats for your notes. For example: If more than one article set up a spreadsheet to identify authors, article theme and quotes and paraphrases. This will help with putting your outline together when you start to write  (p 55-78).

The Virtual Writing Center has other resources available at the top of this page to help guide you to academic success. Tutorials: Want to see how much you know or don’t know about plagiarism? Spend a productive hour watching the tutorials and then take the “Certification Test” at the Indiana University resource: Tutorial: https://www.indiana.edu/~academy/firstPrinciples/tutorials/index.html Test: https://www.indiana.edu/~academy/firstPrinciples/certificationTests/index.html Finally: As a member of a discipline, you’re responsible to learn the style sheet of your field of practice (APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.).  Use online resources and manuals relevant to your field. If you’re unclear, seek help and work one-one with Mentor/VWC.  If you want professional help, go to the AU Writers’ Exchange (wex.antioch.edu).  Also review this handy checklist for APA Style that was designed for writers to refer to prior to submitting their papers. Writing support is designed to help students. With friendly student peer consultants, you may talk about your writing and get the support you need. You’re not alone.    References Boyle, P.S. (2009).  Demystifying dissertation writing. Stylus Pub: New York.

Resources for Faculty

• Responding to Plagiarism
• Plagiarism Checklist for Faculty

Academic Resources: Bronwyn T. Williams (2008). Trust, betrayal, and authorship: Plagiarism and how we perceive students.   Journal of Adolescent and and Adult Literacy 51 :4, 350 – 354. Abstract: Emotional responses to plagiarism are rarely addressed in professional literature that focuses on ethics and good teaching practices. Yet, the emotions that are unleashed by cases of plagiarism, or suspicions of plagiarism, influence how we perceive our students and how we approach teaching them. Such responses have been complicated by online plagiarism-detection services that emphasize surveillance and detection. My opposition to such plagiarism software services grows from the conviction that if we use them we are not only poisoning classroom relationships, but also we are missing important opportunities for teaching.

Howard, R., & Robillard, A. (2008). Pluralizing plagiarism : Identities, contexts, pedagogies . Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Pluralizing Plagiarism offers multiple answers to this question — answers that insist on taking into account the rhetorical situations in which plagiarism occurs. While most scholarly publications on plagiarism mirror mass media’s attempts to reduce the issue to simple black-and-white statements, the contributors to Pluralizing Plagiarism recognize that it takes place not in universalized realms of good and bad, but in specific contexts in which students’ cultural backgrounds often play a role. Teachers concerned about plagiarism can best address the issue in the classroom — especially the first-year composition classroom — as part of writing pedagogy and not just as a matter for punishment and prohibition. . . “–Back cover.

Price, M. (2002). Beyond “Gotcha!”: Situating plagiarism in policy and pedagogy. College Composition and Communication, 54 (1), 88-115 Abstract:Plagiarism is difficult, if not impossible, to define. In this paper, I argue for a context-sensitive understanding of plagiarism by analyzing a set of written institutional policies and suggesting ways that they might be revised. In closing, I offer examples of classroom practices to help teach a concept of plagiarism as situated in context.

Reflections on Plagiarism, Part 1: A Guide for the Perplexed

Peter Charles Hoffer | Feb 1, 2004

William J. Cronon, vice president of the AHA's Professional Division, writes: The AHA's Professional Division is commissioning a series of essays and advisory documents about common challenges historians face in their work. Although these essays will be reviewed and edited by members of the Professional Division, and although they will appear in Perspectives and on the AHA web site, they should not be regarded as official statements of either the Professional Division or the AHA. Instead, their goal is to offer wise counsel by thoughtful members of our guild in an effort to promote wide-ranging conversations among historians about our professional practice. Because plagiarism has generated so much public comment and controversy in recent years, we have focused some of our earliest efforts on this critical issue. We are most grateful to Peter Hoffer, an eminent legal historian at the University of Georgia and a member of the Professional Division, for producing the following "Reflections on Plagiarism" (the concluding part, " The Object of Trials ," can be found in the March 2004 issue of Perspectives ).

There are seven causes of inconsistencies and contradictions to be met with in a literary work. The first cause arises from the fact that the author collects the opinions of various men, each differing from the other, but neglects to mention the name of the author of any particular opinion. 1 —Maimonides, A Guide for the Perplexed

For writers, readers, and teachers of history, as for Maimonides long ago, plagiarism is rightly both a mortifying and perplexing form of professional misconduct. It is mortifying because it is a species of crime—the theft of another person's contribution to knowledge—that educated, respectable people commit. It is perplexing, because, despite the public shame that invariably accompanies revelations of plagiarism, it continues to occur at every level of the profession, from prizewinning historians to students just beginning their careers. While many of these infractions have come to light because readers and writers of history are keen-eyed and implacable critics of the offense, additional cases may be avoided if authors and reviewers knew more about the offense. That is the purpose of this essay, the first installment of two on the subject of plagiarism.

Plagiarism is commonly defined as the appropriation of another's work as one's own. 2 Some definitions add the purposive element of gaining an advantage of some kind. 3 Others include the codicil, "with the intent to deceive." 4 The historical profession has adopted a broad and stern definition of plagiarism, based upon ethical rather than purely legal conceptions. Its definition of plagiarism is the "expropriation of another author's text, and the presentation of it as one's own." 5 It does not require that the act be intentional, nor that the offender gain some advantage from it. 6 Nor for historians is the ultimate sanction against the offense a legal one, but instead the public infamy that accompanies egregious misconduct. As historians, we know, in the words of Lord Acton, the "undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong." 7

Plagiarism may include copyright violations, but the two are conceptually independent. Massive plagiarism may not involve a single instance of copyright infringement. Copyright is a property right defined by statute. In general, copyrighted materials can only be reproduced with permission of the copyright holder, but the "fair use exception" in the law permits quotation from most scholarly works. Plagiarism is first and foremost an ethical matter, and whether or not permission is required or obtained for use of another's work, the rules for source references and against impermissible copying or borrowing apply whether or not the source is under copyright protection.

The Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct prepared by the AHA reminds us that plagiarism "takes many forms." These may include "the limited borrowing, without attribution, of another person's distinctive and significant research findings . . . or an extended borrowing even with attribution." 8 The bottom line is: work presented as original must be original; phrasings and research findings derived from others must be credited to others or the entire scholarly enterprise is undermined.

Historians adhere to these standards with the full knowledge that not everyone has the same attitude toward plagiarism as the historical profession. Some observers have noted that plagiarism may not only be common in painting, architecture, music, literature, and other forms of fine artistic expression; it is often regarded as a form of compliment. Uncredited borrowing occurs in popular art forms with disconcerting regularity. One best selling mystery-adventure novel based on a supposed code in the work of Leonardo Da Vinci relies upon and repeats the discoveries of many art historians, but neither mentions nor cites any of them. 9 Folk music artists routinely rewrite and rearrange their predecessor's tunes in what Pete Seeger has called, according to Arlo Guthrie, "'the folk process.'" 10 Legal writing is more accommodating to plagiarism than historians are. According to one leading legal scholar, "an individual act of plagiarism usually does little or no harm," 11 a perspective perhaps influenced by the fact that appellate judges' legal opinions are supposed to be derivative, based on lines of precedent elucidated in earlier judicial decisions.

At the same time, any realistic treatment of this highly complex and long-lived issue within the historical profession must include descriptive as well as prescriptive language. That is to say, one should not ignore the existence of long accepted usages, conventions, and occupationally mandated variations, nor the evolution of our standards in this area of professional ethics. 12

I. Avoiding Plagiarism

The first line of defense against plagiarism is the author. Even the most original historical scholarship rests in part upon earlier (secondary) studies. Historians should always give credit to those whose work they have consulted and to those who render assistance in the course of our work. Whether the form of circulation of historians' work is an article, book, museum exhibit, or other kind of publication, historians recognize scholarly debts in three ways: exact quotation, paraphrase, and general citations to works consulted. By their care and integrity in crediting these sources and by limiting the extent and monitoring the form of their copying or borrowing from these sources historians both avert the suspicion of plagiarism and avoid its commission.

All exact reproductions of another's words (direct quotations) should appear within quotation marks, or if in a block quotation, set off at the margins. All missing material from within the quotation must be indicated by ellipses. No words may be added except in square brackets. The order of the passages in the original may be altered by the author of the new work for literary or argumentative purposes, so long as the reference notes indicate the order of the passages in the original. The source of every direct quotation must either be cited in the text and fully described in a "works cited" section at the end of the piece (MLA style), or referenced with foot or end notes ( Chicago Manual of Style ). Publications without in-text reference apparatus (most textbooks, for example) should report all secondary sources in the text or a bibliographical essay. Failure to put the borrowing of exact words in quotation marks; failure to cite the source of the quotation in the reference notes with sufficient precision for a reader to check the quotation; and changing a few words in a nearly exact replication of another's text and then not giving any reference, whether inadvertently, through negligence, or intentionally, may be read as plagiarism. But even with full and correct references to the source, historians must take care not to borrow or copy excessively from any one source or group of sources.

A special case arises when an author quotes from a primary source quoted in part or fully in a secondary source. If the author relies on the secondary source for a portion or the entire text of the primary source, citation of the latter should take something like the form "A [the primary source], quoted in B [the secondary source]." This alerts the reader that the author has borrowed the quotation from the secondary source and has not consulted the original source. The author should not simply cite the primary source. If the author, however, guided by a secondary source, finds the entire primary source in the original, reads it, and then uses some portion of it, there is no need to cite the secondary source in which it was initially encountered. The purpose of scholarly citation of primary sources is to enable other readers to find and examine them for themselves. By contrast, in no case whatsoever should an author simply reproduce another author's documentary evidence with or without that author's reference notes, without fully crediting the author, giving the impression that the borrower had done the research. This is another form of plagiarism.

The second common form of indebtedness to another work is the paraphrase, the rephrasing of another's arguments or findings in one's own language. When in doubt, one should always prefer quotations to paraphrases, but there are reasons for preferring paraphrase to quotation including the inelegance of the prose in the original, the author's desire to avoid stringing together a series of long quotations, and the need to blend into a single paragraph the arguments of many secondary sources. Authors must paraphrase with great care if they are to avoid falling into plagiarism, for paraphrasing lends itself to a wide range of errors. In particular, a paraphrase, particularly after some time has passed in the course of research, may be mistaken by the author for his or her own idea or language and reappear in the author's piece without any attribution. Mosaic paraphrases patching together quotations from a variety of secondary sources, and close paraphrases, wherein the author changes a word or two and reuses a passage from another author without quotation marks, also constitute plagiarism.

In print, all paraphrases, no matter how long or how many works are paraphrased, must be followed by citations to the sources that are as clear and precise as those provided for a direct quotation. The citation should refer to the exact page(s) from which the material was taken, rather than a block of pages or a list of pages containing the material somewhere. If the material comes from a web site (for example another teacher's original lecture notes on an open web site), citation should include the entire web address and the date that it was accessed.

The third common manner of giving credit for a scholarly debt is the general citation to work in the field. Sometimes this will follow the author's summary of arguments or evidence from a number of works. In textbooks, a single paragraph may encapsulate three or four prior publications on the topic. All works an author consults should be either cited in the reference apparatus or in the bibliography. If particular pages were consulted, these should appear in references. By contrast, works not consulted by the author, even though they may be relevant to the topic, should not be cited. Such a citation would give the false impression that the author had used the work. By the same token, when an author makes a general citation to a work that contradicts the author's findings or conclusions, that fact should be noted in the citation.

If an author employs research assistants, their errors—for example the omission of quotation marks around a direct quotation or the omission of a reference at the end of a paraphrase—become the author's responsibility. The general rule that the supervisor is responsible for the acts of the employee applies here. What is more, the author had the chance, before publication, to review the entire text, and with that last clear chance goes the onus for all errors.

II. Conventions and Usages

Often it is hard to determine where plagiarism has occurred. Readers may disagree whether and how often an author has crossed the line between the permissible and the impermissible. Another way to formulate this general issue is that historians' use of others' work lies along a spectrum, a "continuum of intellectual indebtedness" in the words of William Cronon, in which possible misconduct in each work must be weighed on its own merits.

I would add to this another dimension ruled along an axis of long-established usages and conventions. As the AHA Statement on Standards reminds us, "historical knowledge is cumulative, and thus in some contexts—such as textbooks, encyclopedia articles, or broad syntheses—the form of attribution, and the permissible extent of dependence on prior scholarship, citation, and other forms of attribution, will differ from what is expected in more limited monographs." 13

The advice on avoiding plagiarism in part I of the essay and the suggestions on dealing with plagiarism in part II apply with particular force to those works whose authors promulgate them as original contributions to scholarship, offering new findings, interpretations, and approaches. 14 Conversely, personal letters, working documents, or in-house memos thus rarely exhibit the formalities of citation. Victoria Harden of the AHA Task Force on Public History suggests that this is particularly true when they are prepared as précis or summaries of existing scholarship by subordinates for their superiors, often on short notice. If at some time the author presents these reports or statements as original contributions to knowledge, or offers them as credentials for hiring, promotion, employment benefits, fellowships, or prizes, they must give credit to all sources consulted.

Certain kinds of historical writing or oral presentation of historical materials for general public consumption also commonly omit reference notes. Such materials may include guidebooks, captions at museum exhibitions, pamphlets distributed at historical sites, and talks or performances by re-enactors or historical interpreters. In the context in which these works are used or performed, their utility might be impaired if their authors or presenters were required to credit their scholarly debts. At the same time, it would be ideal if print or electronic versions of these materials include recognition, in some form, of the contributions of individuals to them and the scholarly sources on which they relied.

Lectures by history teachers to their classes and speeches at public meetings rarely include explicit references to the secondary sources on which the lecturer relies, particularly if the lecture is not presented as an original work of independent scholarship and the materials borrowed from others constitute only a small portion of the whole. The debt that teachers of history owe to their own teachers is pervasive and often results in lectures that borrow structure and theme from those mentors. While acknowledgment of this debt will never go out of fashion, it is commonly omitted.

Textbooks, like lectures to classes, are assumed to be cumulative and synthetic. In fact authors of textbooks rarely quote or cite precisely each secondary source they have used, and the topical structure and rhetorical formulae of new textbooks bear a remarkable similarity to older ones. It would be best if textbook authors limited their borrowing from any one secondary source and cited in a bibliography all the sources used. It is mandatory that any direct quotation from another work (excluding of course prior editions of the same textbook) be correctly identified.

What is generally termed popular history—journalistic accounts, memoirs and autobiographies, and articles by professional historians in general or popular journals of opinion, for example—rarely conforms to the same standards of citation as scholarly monographs and interpretive essays. Many popular histories, for example, have only a short list of works consulted. But wholesale borrowing from another work, even with attribution, is unacceptable. Ideas themselves cannot be plagiarized, but authors may not claim as their own the full-dress presentation, according to the AHA Statement on Standards , of "another person's distinctive and significant research findings, hypotheses, theories, rhetorical strategies, or interpretations." 15

A particular case of book-length scholarship without footnotes or endnotes arises in some noteworthy series of books—for example, the Library of American Biography from Penguin/Viking, and the Landmark Law Cases and American Society from the University Press of Kansas. These are original contributions to knowledge by leading scholars designed primarily for classroom use. Series authors and editors are nevertheless very careful to observe the rules against plagiarism in these books to avert even the suspicion of surreptitious borrowing or copying from other works.

Common understandings, widely shared ideas, dates, names, places, and events in history do not need to be referenced, even if they were obtained from a particular source in print. For example, one does not need to cite a source to say that Washington was a Virginian, or that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. Similarly, catch phrases, "conventional wisdom" (itself a phrase coined by the prizewinning economist, John Kenneth Galbraith), and even longer quotations borrowed from sources in common currency, like Shakespeare, the Bible, and Monty Python can be repeated without references. 16 But if an argument or thesis is unique to a secondary source, and not a matter of general currency, the source should be cited.

The foregoing paragraphs in section II refer to secondary or scholarly sources. The appropriate use and citation of primary sources raises slightly different questions. It is plagiarism to take as one's own work portions of primary sources without citation, or through excessive borrowing even with citation; but when these are clearly indicated as the work of another, formal citation of the place where the author found the primary source (a printed documentary edition or the archive, for instance) is sometimes omitted. I believe that historians should treat primary sources with the same scholarly care as they apply to secondary sources, indicating exactly where they found a primary source (so that those who follow them can find it as well). Failure to fully credit a primary source (failing, for example, to give the title of the docket book or the file paper collection as well as the courthouse when citing a legal document) may not only lead to confusion among readers and suspicions of research misconduct, it lends itself to plagiarism.

A final, somewhat special case involves work for hire. If an author hires research assistants or "ghost writers," and by the terms of their contracts the latter agree that their names will not appear on the work as its author, they cannot argue that the final product plagiarizes their work. As Linda Shopes of the Task Force on Public History suggests, it is always good practice, however, for any supervisor who uses in his or her own work the research or writing of an employee to credit that employee by name. When an author relies upon the research of others not hired for that purpose—students in the author's class or individuals whose graduate studies the author is directing, for example—and those researchers' own language (as opposed to the documents or other evidence they find) is adopted or adapted by the author, it is unethical not to give credit to the researcher. This may be done in the acknowledgments section of the publication, in a note or notes, or in the text. If the author has depended upon the researcher to write up the results of the research and then uses these reports verbatim, the researcher should be given co-authorship. 17

III. Detecting Plagiarism

Both academic and lay readers rely on the integrity of scholars. Authors owe it to their audiences as well as to themselves to avoid even a hint of plagiarism and are the best detectors of inadvertent mistakes in attribution or excessive copying even with references. This is true from the inception of the research to the closing stages of preparation of manuscripts for publication. Before any piece of scholarly research is presented orally, circulated, or submitted to a publisher, the author should review it carefully for plagiarism. Returning to the research notes and laying them against the text may reveal errors. The author should look for omissions and commissions that might have slipped into the successive drafts over time.

All scholarly journals and academic presses will send the work out to readers ("referees") to advise on publication, but referees cannot catch every instance of questionable use of secondary sources; nor should referees be held responsible if plagiarism slips past them. In particular, citation checking is not ordinarily part of their job. If the publisher (as is true of most trade houses) does not employ outside readers, the author has to be doubly careful. Book reviewers (or referees asked to help with hiring or tenure and promotion decisions) may uncover instances of plagiarism, but because that is not the primary reason for which they are reading the author's work, one cannot expect them to catch plagiarists in the act.

Despite all the reasons for which authors should and can avoid plagiarism, it occurs. The suspicion that a work contains plagiarism and its subsequent exposure are not pleasant occasions. Historical scholarship depends upon trust. Readers and publishers both rely on authors' claims of originality (indeed, book publishing contracts require authors to "warranty" that they have not plagiarized any other work).

In all cases of suspected plagiarism, the single most effective method of detection is the meticulous, side-by-side comparison of texts. This parallel reading of source (original) text and target (new) text will not absolutely prove plagiarism except in the most egregious cases, but it can raise or allay the level of suspicion. A reader comparing texts should not just look for similar words or phrases (for example, groups of three or four words) as these may in fact come from more than one author using the same primary sources or from the argot of a specific field. Instead, the reader should concentrate on unusual phrasing, for example uncommon verbs and unique combinations of modifiers. An example of parallel text comparison appears on the AHA web site. 18

If the reader of parallel texts finds a few examples of questionable practices in a long work, they may, with the profession's accustomed charity, be attributed to mere coincidence. In the uncovering of plagiarism, as in all misconduct, one presumes innocence. But discovery of plagiarism throughout a manuscript or plagiarism in a series of publications suggests wanton and cynical disregard of ethical and professional standards, and will not be forgiven. The discovery may take years, but plagiarism is an offense that cannot be hidden forever.

—Peter Hoffer, Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia, is a member of the Professional Division of the AHA.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Maureen Murphy Nutting, Susan Mosher Stuard, and Denise Youngblood, members of the AHA's Professional Division, and William Cronon, its vice president; Arnita Jones, executive director of the AHA; Stanley N. Katz, chair of the AHA Task Force on Intellectual Property, and its members Michael Les Benedict and Michael Grossberg; the AHA Task Force on Public History, its chair, Linda Shopes, and its members Victoria A. Harden and Jamil Zainaldin; James Grossman, vice president for research and education at the Newberry Library; Nan McMurry, history and social science acquisitions librarian, University of Georgia Libraries; Lewis Bateman, senior acquisitions editor, Cambridge University Press; Fred Woodward, director, and Michael Briggs, editor in chief at the University Press of Kansas; Charles Grench, assistant director, and Amanda McMillan, assistant editor, University of North Carolina Press; Ashley Dodge, senior editor, Longman Publishing, College Division; Robert Brugger, senior editor, Johns Hopkins University Press; Williamjames Hoffer, Seton Hall University; and the members of the University of Georgia history colloquium for assistance in the preparation of this document.

Part 2 of this essay will be published in the March 2004 issue of Perspectives .

1. Maimonides [Moses Ben Maimon], "Introductory Remarks on Method," The Guide for the Perplexed trans. M. Friedlander 2nd rev. ed. ([1904] reprinted New York: Dover, 1956), 9.

2. Black's Law Dictionary , 7th ed., Bryan A. Garner, ed., 1170.

3. Joseph Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th ed. (New York, 2003), 66.

4. Black's Law Dictionary, 1170, quoting Paul Goldstein, Copyright's Highway, 12.

5. The Statement on Standards of Professional Conduct (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 2003), 10.

6. In this we are in accord with the Modern Language Association; see Gibaldi, MLA Handbook , 66.

7. John Edward Emerich Acton, A Lecture on the Study of History, Delivered at Cambridge , June 11, 1895 (London: Macmillan, 1895), 63.

8. Statement on Standards , 10. See below for examples of these.

9. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2003). The book's "Acknowledgments" (n.p.) has only this: "My thanks also to Water Street Book Store for tracking down so many of my research books" and does not mention the individual titles and authors.

10. Arlo Guthrie quoted in Jon Pareles, "Critic's Notebook: Honoring Alan Lomax, Folk Music Crusader," the New York Times April 14, 2003, E3.

11. Richard A. Posner, "The Truth About Plagiarism," Newsday , May 18, 2003, reprinted at www.law.uchicago.edu/news/ posner-r-plagiarism.html (accessed May 1, 2003).

12. See, for example, Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 190–91.

13. AHA, Statement on Standards , 10. Older usages and conventions of citation were often not as precise or complete as those for citation in use today. For example, Oscar Handlin's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Uprooted (Boston: Little, Brown, 1937), Daniel Boorstin's Bancroft Prize-winning The Americans: The Colonial Experience (New York: Knopf, 1958) and his Parkman Prize-winning The Americans: The National Experience (New York: Knopf, 1965) did not have any notes. Neither did Perry Miller's much admired The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston: Beacon, 1954). They merely had detailed bibliographies without page references to the quotations in the text.

14. This essay does not consider the question of falsification of research findings. A good survey of the issues raised in these cases appears in Ellen Altman and Peter Hernon, eds., Research Misconduct: Issues, Implications, and Strategies (Greenwich, Ct., 1997).

15. Statement on Standards, 10.

16. Maurice Isserman, "Plagiarism: A Lie of the Mind," The Chronicle Review: Chronicle of Higher Education , May 2, 2003, B12–B13. "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition."

17. In the area of electronic publishing, editors are taking an increasingly active role in areas that traditionally were categorized as "authorship." See Kate Wittenberg, "Scholarly Editing in the Digital Age," Chronicle of Higher Education , June 20, 2003, B12. It is not clear to what extent this development will continue, nor whether it will raise questions of proprietorship of electronically published scholarship.

18. See Susan Mosher Stuard and William Cronon, "How to Detect and Demonstrate Plagiarism."

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Avoiding unintentional plagiarism: common pitfalls and how to escape them.

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Plagiarism, the act of using someone else’s work or ideas without proper acknowledgment, is a serious offense in the academic world. It can tarnish a student’s reputation, result in failing grades, and even lead to disciplinary action. While most students understand the importance of avoiding deliberate plagiarism, unintentional plagiarism can be a trickier beast. 

It often sneaks up on students unaware of the nuances of academic integrity or how to cite sources properly. Understanding what constitutes unintentional plagiarism and how to avoid it is crucial for anyone in secondary education, pursuing a master’s, or navigating the complexities of college.

The Essay Writer’s Role

The role of an essay writer , be it a student crafting a college essay or a professional offering guidance, is not just to produce text but to weave in the ideas, data, and voices of others in a way that respects the principles of academic integrity. 

This includes understanding how to navigate the Apple education store for apps that can help manage citations or looking at essay examples to see how seasoned essay writers incorporate and credit sources. The goal is to build upon what has been done before without falling into the trap of unintentionally claiming it as one’s own.

What Is Unintentional Plagiarism and When Does It Occur?

Unintentional plagiarism typically occurs when students fail to paraphrase, quote, or cite their sources properly. This can happen for several reasons, such as misunderstanding the rules of citation, poor note-taking, or simply not realizing that a specific idea requires attribution. 

For students transitioning from secondary education to the demands of a college of education or any higher education institution, the expectations around academic writing and integrity significantly increase. The shift requires a deeper understanding of engaging with and referencing existing knowledge within one’s work.

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Common Pitfalls in Avoiding Unintentional Plagiarism

• Poor Paraphrasing: Simply changing a few words from a source does not constitute proper paraphrasing. Effective paraphrasing involves completely rewriting the source material in your own words while fully understanding and conveying the original meaning.
• Overlooking Citations: Whether it’s a direct quote, paraphrase, or summary, failing to cite your source is a path to unintentional plagiarism. Each educational institution, whether it’s a secondary school or college, typically adheres to specific citation styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) that guide how to properly credit sources.
• Mismanaged Notes: During research, it’s easy to mix up your ideas with those you’ve read about. Keeping detailed notes and clearly marking where ideas are sourced can help prevent this mix-up.
• Over-reliance on Sources: While research is foundational to academic writing, leaning too heavily on the ideas of others without providing your analysis or synthesis can lead to a paper that lacks original thought and inadvertently plagiarizes.

Strategies for Escaping These Pitfalls

• Educate Yourself: Familiarize yourself with what constitutes plagiarism and the specific citation rules for your field of study. Many colleges offer resources and workshops on academic writing and integrity.
• Use Technology Wisely: Leverage tools available through the app store or other platforms that can help you organize your research, manage citations, and check your work for potential plagiarism.
• Practice Paraphrasing: Regularly practice rewriting sentences and paragraphs in your own words. This not only helps avoid plagiarism but also strengthens your overall writing skills.
• Seek Feedback: Don’t hesitate to ask for advice or feedback. Whether it’s from peers, tutors, or professional essay writers, getting a second opinion can help you spot and correct unintentional plagiarism before submission.

Embracing Originality in Your Work

The journey from what is secondary education to higher levels, like a college of education or a master’s program, is filled with opportunities to develop and express your original thoughts. Embracing originality isn’t just about avoiding plagiarism; it’s about pushing the boundaries of your knowledge and contributing new ideas to your field. 

Start by engaging deeply with your subjects, asking questions, and allowing your curiosity to guide your research. This approach not only enriches your learning experience but also naturally steers you away from unintentionally mimicking others’ work.

Building Confidence in Citation

Many students fear the citation process, worrying that a mistake could lead to accusations of plagiarism. However, citation is simply a skill, and like all skills, it improves with practice. Begin by exploring resources offered by your institution, such as the college essay examples provided by many colleges, which can serve as practical guides for proper citation. 

Additionally, consider using citation management tools recommended by your institution’s library. These tools can simplify the process, ensuring that you give credit where it’s due accurately and consistently.

Developing a Research Strategy

A solid research strategy is your best defense against unintentional plagiarism. This involves more than just gathering sources; it requires a systematic approach to note-taking, organizing your thoughts, and distinguishing between your ideas and those you’ve read about. 

Techniques such as color-coding notes or maintaining separate digital folders for different projects can help organize your research. Moreover, regularly reviewing your notes and sources can reinforce your understanding of the material, reducing the likelihood of unintentional plagiarism.

Seeking Support When Needed

There’s no shame in seeking support when you’re struggling with academic writing. Whether it’s a tutor, a mentor, or an essay writer service, getting help when you need it is a sign of responsibility, not weakness. 

For instance, if you’re grappling with how to integrate sources into your paper without plagiarizing, a session with a writing tutor can provide clarity and build your skills. 

Similarly, if you’re overwhelmed with coursework and concerned about meeting deadlines without compromising integrity, exploring services that offer guidance on structuring and developing essays can be invaluable.

Final Thoughts

Unintentional plagiarism is a common hurdle for students at all levels of education, from those completing their secondary education to even those enrolled in a master’s of education program. However, it is entirely avoidable with awareness, diligence, and the right strategies. 

By educating yourself on the rules of academic integrity, meticulously managing your research and citations, and seeking out resources and support, you can ensure your academic work is ethical and original. Remember, the aim of academic writing is not just to showcase what you’ve learned from others but to contribute your own voice to the ongoing academic conversation.

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Academic Integrity - Referencing, Citation & Avoiding Plagiarism: Plagiarism Examples

• Introduction
• Academic Integrity Tutorials
• Plagiarism Examples
• Common Knowledge
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• Plagiarism and the Internet
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Plagiarism Examples in Academic Practice

Each of the anonymised and adapted cases of plagiarism on this page are outlined in order to help you recognize plagiarism in academic practice. All examples were referred to UCD's  Student Discipline Procedure and received a sanction. Read through each of these examples and think about how the student may have avoided plagiarizing.

We have lots of resources on this guide to help you manage time, plan assignments, and cite and reference appropriately. UCD Writing Centre offer a free-of-charge service dedicated to supporting UCD students.

If you find yourself under pressure or stress to finish an assignment, ensure you contact your module coordinator to discuss your options around an extension or  extenuating circumstances . You can also seek help from your student adviser  who can facilitate communications and ways to solve problems. UCD has a student counselling service with superb in-person and online supports.

Undergraduate Module

An essay was submitted by a student who had already submitted the same essay for another module within their programme in the previous year. The examiner noted that the essay only partially addressed the topic of the given assignment. The student stated that they did not know anything about self-plagiarism and thought it would be acceptable to submit an essay again, because it was their own work. 

Note: Self-plagiarism  occurs when a student submits their own work which has already received credit. It is important to be aware of the different types of plagiarism, as unintentional plagiarism can still result in a sanction. 

Undergraduate, Thesis Module

Examiners noted irregularities and unusual characteristics in a student's undergraduate thesis. Much of the content of the thesis did not relate to the research conducted by the student. Another person’s name was discovered to be associated with the file submitted by the student. The examiner was able to trace the source material to an “essay mill” type website. In this case, the student admitted that they had submitted a thesis which they had bought online from an ‘essay mill.’

Taught Masters, Thesis Module

A student was asked to prepare a presentation to summarise their thesis preparation. The work submitted contained no quotes, citations or references to academic works. In addition there were significant unacknowledged sections that were taken from another student's masters thesis which was found to be freely available online. 

The examples of plagiarism in this case include

• several instances where the student quoted verbatim from a text that was not cited
• multiple instances where the student quoted extensively (paragraphs at a time) from a masters’ thesis available online
• verbatim quotation from numerous websites without citation or attribution
• quotation from academic work without appropriate page number(s)  

Taught Masters, Professional Learning Journal Module

A student was assigned a task to reflect on learning gained during four of the module’s classes. The student had to then produce a summary reflection essay exploring how this learning might be further applied to their own development and practice. The assignment required reflection on discussions that took place during classes, assigned readings and demonstration of connections made to other learning attained across the programme.  

In this case the student directly quoted from academic texts and used ideas without either quotation marks or citation. There were several examples where the student had quoted extensively from a journal article without appropriate acknowledgement.  In a number of instances, citations were used for ideas that did not correlate with the papers referenced in the assignment.   

The examples of plagiarism here were

• misrepresentation of the work of academics whose work was cited
• quotation from assigned readings without quotation marks or attribution (citation or references)
• quotation without clear attribution or page number
• quotation from other academic journals without attribution 

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1.3 GETTING STARTED: Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism is using someone else’s words or ideas without giving them credit. In some cultures around the world, this may not be a big deal. However, it is unacceptable in U.S. colleges. It is considered the same as stealing. (Of course, some things are “common knowledge” such as  the U.S. is in North America , and you don’t have to cite a source of information for that.)

If you plagiarize, then you will probably get a 0 on the assignment — and you will still have to rewrite it! Now you have twice as much work to do, and nobody wants that! Plus, if you plagiarize repeatedly, your instructor will need to report you to the Dean and you may fail the course. In some schools, students who plagiarize repeatedly are even asked to leave the school — it’s that serious!

Fortunately, this class will teach you how to avoid plagiarism by:

• using your own ideas
• using data (such as facts and statistics) — and citing the source (telling your reader where you got the information)
• paraphrasing the ideas of others (expressing the idea in your own words) — and citing the source (telling your reader where you got the information)
• quoting the words of others (repeating the exact words of the author inside “quotation marks”) — and citing the source (telling your reader where you got the information)

Do you see a pattern in the list above? That’s right — it’s all about knowing when and how to cite your sources. And that is something we will study in this course.

To get started, please watch this short video to learn more about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it:

Now practice with this exercise; it is not graded, and you may repeat it as many times as you wish:

Video: Modern Librarian Memoirs. “How to Avoid Plagiarism in 5 Easy Steps.” www.youtube.com, 5 Apr. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV2-cmi19sg&t=1s.  Accessed 30 Dec. 2021.

Synthesis Copyright © 2022 by Timothy Krause is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

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According to USC's Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards , plagiarism is:

• The submission of material authored by another person but represented as the student's own work, whether that material is paraphrased or copied in verbatim or near-verbatim form.
• The submission of material subjected to editorial revision by another person that results in substantive changes in content or major alteration of writing style.
• Improper acknowledgment of sources in essays or papers.

Avoiding Allegations of Plagiarism

An allegation of plagiarism is intent-neutral . In other words, the reader cannot discern whether the absence of a citation was done deliberately or you simply forgot to add a citation or accidentally cited to the wrong source. Therefore, it is important to proofread your paper before you submit it to ensure you have listed all sources used during your research. This is also why it is important to keep track of everything you have used during the course of writing your paper so you can easily assess whether all your sources have been cited.

With this in mind, credit must be given when using one of the following in your own research paper:

• Another person's idea, opinion, or theory;
• Any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings, or other non-textual elements used or that you adapted from another source;
• Any pieces of information that are not common knowledge;
• Quotations of another person's actual spoken or written words; or
• Paraphrase of another person's spoken or written words.

To introduce students to the process of citing other people's work, the USC Libraries have created a useful online tutorial on avoiding plagiarism . It describes what constitutes plagiarism and offers helpful advice on how to properly cite sources. In addition, the Office of Student Judicial Affairs and Community Standards has also published, "Trojan Integrity: A Guide for Avoiding Plagiarism." This guide provides a comprehensive explanation for how to defend yourself against allegations of violating the university's policy on academic integrity.

If you have any doubts about whether to cite a particular source concerning an argument or statement made in your paper, protect yourself by citing the source or sources that helps the reader determine the validity of your work. Note that not citing a source not only raises concerns about the academic integrity of your paper, but, more importantly, it tells the reader that you did not conduct an effective or thorough review of the literature in support of examining the research problem. It also inhibits the reader's ability to review the cited source to obtain further information about what is being discussed in your paper.

Academic Integrity. The Writing Center. University of Kansas; Avoiding Plagiarism. Academic Skills Program, University of Canberra; How and When to Cite Other People's Work. Psychology Writing Center, University of Washington; Proctor, Margaret. "How Not to Plagiarize." University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Plagiarism. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Plagiarism. The Writing Center. Department of English, George Mason University. Avoiding Plagiarism. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University.

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Prevent plagiarism, run a free plagiarism check.

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• Examples of Plagiarism & Tips for Avoiding It

Examples of Plagiarism & Tips for Avoiding It

Published on November 1, 2021 by Tegan George . Revised on July 15, 2022.

Plagiarism means using someone else’s words or ideas without properly crediting the original author.

Some common examples of plagiarism include:

• Paraphrasing a source too closely
• Including a direct quote without quotation marks
• Copying elements of different sources and pasting them into a new document
• Leaving out an in-text citation
• Submitting a full text that is not your own

Table of contents

Paraphrasing plagiarism, verbatim plagiarism, patchwork plagiarism: combining multiple sources, common knowledge: when do i need a citation, real-life examples of plagiarism, frequently asked questions about plagiarism.

Paraphrasing means putting someone else’s ideas into your own words. In order to do so correctly, you must entirely rewrite the passage you are referencing without changing the meaning of the original text.

Every time you paraphrase, it’s important to cite the original source and avoid wording that is too similar to the original. Otherwise, you could be at risk of committing paraphrasing plagiarism .

Remember that paraphrasing doesn’t just mean switching out a few words for synonyms while retaining the original sentence structure. The author’s idea must be reformulated in a way that fits smoothly into your text.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Quoting means copying a brief passage from another text, enclosing it in quotation marks .

If you fail to include quotation marks or a citation, you’re committing verbatim plagiarism : copying someone’s exact words without acknowledgement. Even if you change a few of the words, it’s still plagiarism.

To quote correctly, introduce the quotation in your own words, make sure it’s enclosed in quotation marks, and include a citation showing where it comes from.

Patchwork plagiarism , also called mosaic plagiarism, involves copying elements of different sources and combining them to create a new text. It can include both directly copying and paraphrasing content without citation.

It can be challenging to incorporate several sources into your work at once, so be sure to double-check that you are citing each one correctly.

If you quote or paraphrase multiple sources in one sentence, it’s often best to cite each one separately, so that it’s clear what material comes from which source.

“Americans have always remembered the battle. What we often forget are the difficult decisions tribal leaders made afterward to ensure the safety of their people” (Van Heuvelen, 2020).

“Under skies darkened by smoke, gunfire and flying arrows, 210 men of the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry Unit led by Lt. Colonel George Custer confronted thousands of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors on June 25, 1876, near the Little Big Horn River in present-day Montana. The engagement was one in a series of battles and negotiations between Plains Indians and U.S. forces over control of Western territory, collectively known as the Sioux Wars” (McDermott, 2021). Example: Patchwork plagiarism For many Americans, the headdress is a well-known symbol of indigenous America indistinguishable from the narrative of the “wild west and cowboys and Indians.” One of the most famous examples of the cowboys versus Indians narrative is the Battle of Little Bighorn.

On June 25, 1876, 210 men of the U.S. Army’s 7th Cavalry Unit led by Lt. Colonel George Custer confronted thousands of Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne warriors . Custer and his men were handily defeated, and Americans have always remembered the battle as “Custer’s Last Stand.” What is often forgotten is the difficult decisions tribal leaders made afterward to ensure the safety of their people . Example: Correctly citing multiple sources The headdress is a well-known symbol of indigenous America, forming part of “the narrative of the wild west and cowboys and Indians” (Van Heuvelen, 2020). One of the most famous examples of this narrative is the Battle of Little Bighorn.

Common knowledge refers to information you can reasonably expect the average reader to accept without proof.

For this kind of information, you don’t need a citation. For example, you won’t be accused of plagiarism for failing to cite your sources when you mention Paris is the capital city of France.

In order to be considered common knowledge, your statement must be widely known, undisputed, and easily verified. It also generally cannot be attributed to a specific person or paper. When in doubt, add a citation.

Plagiarism is most commonly discussed in the context of academia, but it’s a relevant concern across all sorts of different industries, from pop music to politics.

• Plagiarism in academia
• Plagiarism in art
• Plagiarism in politics
• Plagiarism in music

In 2006, the Brookings Institute accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of having plagiarized 80% of his economics dissertation from a paper published by the University of Pittsburgh a few decades earlier.

Dissertation plagiarism committed by other famous politicians, such as former Senator John Walsh, former German Defense Secretary Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, and former Hungarian President Pal Schmitt, led to their resignations and their degrees being revoked.

Source: CNN Reusing or copying existing materials has been a big part of many types of art. However, it is still possible to plagiarize art.

In 1966, famous Pop Art artist Andy Warhol was sued by photographer Patricia Caulfield, who claimed unauthorized use of one of her photographs. Warhol had seen her photo of hibiscus flowers in the 1964 issue of Modern Photography  and used it for his silkscreen work Flowers .

While Warhol’s team argued that this was “fair use,” a judge determined that Warhol had, in fact, plagiarized the photo. This led to enduring reputation costs and a large financial settlement.

Source: Garden Collage Many political speeches revolve around similar themes, but while it is natural to draw inspiration from previous speeches, paraphrasing them too closely is considered plagiarism.

In 2016, a speech Melania Trump gave at the Republican National Convention was found to have copied several paragraphs almost verbatim from a speech Michelle Obama gave at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

While her staff claimed that she had incorporated “fragments of others’ speeches that reflected her own thinking,” she was widely considered to have plagiarized.

Joe Biden was found to have committed similar plagiarism in a speech he gave during the 1988 presidential campaign, paraphrasing a speech by Welsh politician Neil Kinnock too closely.

Source: CNN While technically no one owns a chord progression or particular combination of sounds, plagiarism in the music industry is a common accusation.

In 2018, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 2013 hit song “Blurred Lines,” by Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, infringed on the copyright of the song “Got to Give it Up,” by the late Marvin Gaye. The Gaye family was awarded over $5 million in damages as well as 50% of the royalties moving forward.

This sets a precedent that new music must be different in both style and substance from previously copyrighted songs. Other hit artists, such as Sam Smith, George Harrison, and Olivia Rodrigo, have faced similar consequences.

Plagiarism means presenting someone else’s work as your own without giving proper credit to the original author. In academic writing, plagiarism involves using words, ideas, or information from a source without including a citation .

Plagiarism can have serious consequences , even when it’s done accidentally. To avoid plagiarism, it’s important to keep track of your sources and cite them correctly.

Some examples of plagiarism include:

• Copying and pasting a Wikipedia article into the body of an assignment
• Quoting a source without including a citation
• Not paraphrasing a source properly, such as maintaining wording too close to the original
• Forgetting to cite the source of an idea

The most surefire way to avoid plagiarism is to always cite your sources . When in doubt, cite!

If you’re concerned about plagiarism, consider running your work through a plagiarism checker tool prior to submission. Scribbr’s Plagiarism Checker takes less than 10 minutes and can help you turn in your paper with confidence.

Common knowledge does not need to be cited. However, you should be extra careful when deciding what counts as common knowledge.

Common knowledge encompasses information that the average educated reader would accept as true without needing the extra validation of a source or citation.

Common knowledge should be widely known, undisputed and easily verified. When in doubt, always cite your sources.

Paraphrasing without crediting the original author is a form of plagiarism , because you’re presenting someone else’s ideas as if they were your own.

However, paraphrasing is not plagiarism if you correctly cite the source . This means including an in-text citation and a full reference, formatted according to your required citation style .

As well as citing, make sure that any paraphrased text is completely rewritten in your own words.

Yes, reusing your own work without acknowledgment is considered self-plagiarism . This can range from re-submitting an entire assignment to reusing passages or data from something you’ve turned in previously without citing them.

Self-plagiarism often has the same consequences as other types of plagiarism . If you want to reuse content you wrote in the past, make sure to check your university’s policy or consult your professor.

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Understanding-Oriented Pedagogy to Strengthen Plagiarism-Free Academic Writing pp 21–33 Cite as

Teaching to Avoid Plagiarism in Academic Writing

• Yin Zhang 2  
• First Online: 22 February 2024

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When students enter universities, they usually study in disciplines and have many chances to involve in academic writing. For example, a student may be required to finish an academic writing assignment as a formative (or summative) assessment in a course, write a dissertation for a degree, or prepare an academic article for publication. Academic writing is at the heart of learning in higher education, because it involves students’ understandings about their disciplines, critical thinking about academic topics, text creation based on analyses, and arguments on targeted themes (Hyland, Language Teaching 46:53–70, 2013). Academic writing has distinct differences from “natural” writing in which people routinely narrate what they see and do (Hyland, Language Teaching 46:53–70, 2013, p. 55), because academic writing focuses on more than just writing. It requires students to critically analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information in specific disciplinary fields. Moreover, academic writing is related to disciplinary knowledge and specific academic terms are often used in texts (Irvin, L. L. (2010). What Is “Academic” Writing? In Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing (Vol. 1, pp. 3–17). Creative Commons.).

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A publication of the harvard college writing program.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources 

• The Honor Code
• How to Avoid Plagiarism

It's not enough to know why plagiarism is taken so seriously in the academic world or to know how to recognize it. You also need to know how to avoid it.

The simplest cases of plagiarism to avoid are the intentional ones: If you copy a paper from a classmate, buy a paper from the Internet, copy material from a book, article, podcast, video, or website without citing the author, you are plagiarizing. Here's the best advice you'll ever receive about avoiding intentional plagiarism: If you're tempted to borrow someone else's ideas or plagiarize in any way because you're pressed for time, nervous about how you're doing in a class, or confused about the assignment, don't do it . The problems you think you're solving by plagiarizing are really minor compared to the problems you will create for yourself by plagiarizing. In every case, the consequences of plagiarism are much more serious than the consequences of turning in a paper late or turning in a paper you're not satisfied to have written.

The consequences of accidental plagiarism are equally daunting and should be avoided at all costs. As a member of an intellectual community you are expected to respect the ideas of others in the same way that you would respect any other property that didn't belong to you, and this is true whether you plagiarize on purpose or by accident. The best way to make sure you don't plagiarize due to confusion or carelessness is to 1) understand what you're doing when you write a paper and 2) follow a method that is systematic and careful as you do your research . In other words, if you have a clear sense of what question you're trying to answer and what knowledge you're building on, and if you keep careful, clear notes along the way, it's much easier to use sources effectively and responsibly and, most of all, to write a successful paper.

If you have questions about plagiarism at any point in your research or writing process, ask. It's always better to ask questions than it is to wait for an instructor to respond to work that you have turned in for a grade. Once you have turned in your final work, you will be held responsible for misuse of sources.

Keep Track of Your Sources; Save PDFs or Print Electronic Source

While it's easy enough to keep a stack of books or journal articles on your desk where you can easily refer back to them, it's just as important to keep track of electronic sources. When you save a PDF of a journal article, make sure you put it into a folder on your computer where you'll be able to find it. When you consult a website, log the URL in a separate document from the paper you're writing so that you'll be able to return to the website and cite it correctly. You should also print or save to PDF the relevant pages from any websites you use, making sure you note the complete URL and the date on which you printed the material. Because electronic sources aren't stable and websites can disappear without notice, beware of directing your readers to sources that might have disappeared. Check when the website you're using was last updated and update the URLs as you work and once again right before you submit your essay. If an electronic source disappears before you submit your work, you will need to decide whether or not to keep the source in your paper. If you have saved the source and can turn it in with your paper, you should do so. If you have not saved the source, you should consult your instructor about whether or not to use that source in your paper.

Keep Sources in Correct Context

Whenever you consult a source, you should make sure you understand the context, both of the ideas within a source and of the source itself. You should also be careful to consider the context in which a source was written. For example, a book of essays published by an organization with a political bias might not present an issue with adequate complexity for your project. You can learn more about how to understand a source’s context in the Evaluating Sources section of this guide.

The question of context can be more complicated when you're working with Internet sources than with print sources because you may see one article or post as separate from an entire website and use or interpret that page without fully understanding or representing its context. For example, a definition of "communism" taken from a website with a particular political agenda might provide one interpretation of the meaning of the word—but if you neglect to mention the context for that definition, you might use it as though it's unbiased when it isn't. If your web search takes you to a URL that’s part of a larger website, make sure to investigate and take notes on the context of the information you're citing.

Research can often turn out to be more time-consuming than you anticipate. Budget enough time to search for sources, to take notes, and to think about how to use the sources in your essay. Moments of carelessness are more common when you leave your essay until the last minute— and when you are tired or stressed. Honest mistakes can lead to charges of plagiarism just as dishonesty can; be careful when taking notes and when incorporating ideas and language from sources so you always know what language and ideas are yours and what belongs to a source.

Don't Cut and Paste: File and Label Your Sources

Keep your own writing and your sources separate.

Work with either the printed copy of your source(s) or (in the case of online sources) the copy you downloaded—not the online version—as you draft your essay. This precaution not only decreases the risk of plagiarism but also enables you to annotate your sources. Those annotations are an essential step both in understanding the sources and in distinguishing your own ideas from those of the sources.

Keep Your Notes and Your Draft Separate

Paraphrase carefully in your notes; acknowledge your sources explicitly when paraphrasing.

When you want to paraphrase material, it's a good idea first to paste the actual quotation into your notes (not directly into your draft) and then to paraphrase it (still in your notes). Putting the information in your own words will help you make sure that you've thought about what the source is saying and that you have a good reason for using it in your paper. Remember to use some form of notation in your notes to indicate what you've paraphrased and mention the author's name within the material you paraphrase. You should also include all citation information in your notes.

Avoid Reading a Classmate's Paper for Inspiration

If you're in a course that requires peer review or workshops of student drafts, you are going to read your classmates' work and discuss it. This is a productive way of exchanging ideas and getting feedback on your work. If you find, in the course of this work, that you wish to use someone else's idea at some point in your paper (you should never use someone else's idea as your thesis, but there may be times when a classmate's idea would work as a counterargument or other point in your paper), you must credit that person the same way you would credit any other source.

If you find yourself reading someone else's paper because you're stuck on an assignment and don't know how to proceed, you may end up creating a problem for yourself because you might unconsciously copy that person's ideas. When you're stuck, make an appointment with your instructor or go to the Writing Center for advice on how to develop your own ideas.

Don't Save Your Citations for Later

Never paraphrase or quote from a source without immediately adding a citation. You should add citations in your notes, in your response papers, in your drafts, and in your revisions. Without them, it's too easy to lose track of where you got a quotation or an idea and to end up inadvertently taking credit for material that's not your own.

Quote Your Sources Properly

Always use quotation marks for directly quoted material, even for short phrases and key terms.

Keep a Source Trail

As you write and revise your essay, make sure that you keep track of your sources in your notes and in each successive draft of your essay. You should begin this process early, even before you start writing your draft. Even after you've handed in your essay, keep all of your research notes and drafts. You ought to be able to reconstruct the path you took from your sources to your notes and from your notes to your drafts and revision. These careful records and clear boundaries between your writing and your sources will help you avoid plagiarism. And if you are called upon to explain your process to your instructor, you'll be able to retrace the path you took when thinking, researching, and writing, from the essay you submitted back through your drafts and to your sources.

• What Constitutes Plagiarism?
• The Exception: Common Knowledge
• Other Scenarios to Avoid
• Why Does it Matter if You Plagiarize?
• Harvard University Plagiarism Policy

PDFs for This Section

• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Online Library and Citation Tools

Frequently asked questions

How can i avoid plagiarism.

To avoid plagiarism , always include a reference when you use words, ideas or information from a source. This shows that you are not trying to pass the work of others off as your own.

You must also properly quote or paraphrase the source. If you’re not sure whether you’ve done this correctly, you can use the Scribbr Plagiarism Checker to find and correct any mistakes.

Frequently asked questions: Knowledge Base

Methodology refers to the overarching strategy and rationale of your research. Developing your methodology involves studying the research methods used in your field and the theories or principles that underpin them, in order to choose the approach that best matches your objectives.

Methods are the specific tools and procedures you use to collect and analyse data (e.g. interviews, experiments , surveys , statistical tests ).

In a dissertation or scientific paper, the methodology chapter or methods section comes after the introduction and before the results , discussion and conclusion .

Depending on the length and type of document, you might also include a literature review or theoretical framework before the methodology.

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to test a hypothesis by systematically collecting and analysing data, while qualitative methods allow you to explore ideas and experiences in depth.

Reliability and validity are both about how well a method measures something:

• Reliability refers to the  consistency of a measure (whether the results can be reproduced under the same conditions).
• Validity   refers to the  accuracy of a measure (whether the results really do represent what they are supposed to measure).

If you are doing experimental research , you also have to consider the internal and external validity of your experiment.

A sample is a subset of individuals from a larger population. Sampling means selecting the group that you will actually collect data from in your research.

For example, if you are researching the opinions of students in your university, you could survey a sample of 100 students.

Statistical sampling allows you to test a hypothesis about the characteristics of a population. There are various sampling methods you can use to ensure that your sample is representative of the population as a whole.

There are several reasons to conduct a literature review at the beginning of a research project:

• To familiarise yourself with the current state of knowledge on your topic
• To ensure that you’re not just repeating what others have already done
• To identify gaps in knowledge and unresolved problems that your research can address
• To develop your theoretical framework and methodology
• To provide an overview of the key findings and debates on the topic

Writing the literature review shows your reader how your work relates to existing research and what new insights it will contribute.

A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources (such as books, journal articles, and theses) related to a specific topic or research question .

It is often written as part of a dissertation , thesis, research paper , or proposal .

The literature review usually comes near the beginning of your  dissertation . After the introduction , it grounds your research in a scholarly field and leads directly to your theoretical framework or methodology .

Harvard referencing uses an author–date system. Sources are cited by the author’s last name and the publication year in brackets. Each Harvard in-text citation corresponds to an entry in the alphabetised reference list at the end of the paper.

Vancouver referencing uses a numerical system. Sources are cited by a number in parentheses or superscript. Each number corresponds to a full reference at the end of the paper.

A Harvard in-text citation should appear in brackets every time you quote, paraphrase, or refer to information from a source.

The citation can appear immediately after the quotation or paraphrase, or at the end of the sentence. If you’re quoting, place the citation outside of the quotation marks but before any other punctuation like a comma or full stop.

In Harvard referencing, up to three author names are included in an in-text citation or reference list entry. When there are four or more authors, include only the first, followed by ‘ et al. ’

A bibliography should always contain every source you cited in your text. Sometimes a bibliography also contains other sources that you used in your research, but did not cite in the text.

MHRA doesn’t specify a rule about this, so check with your supervisor to find out exactly what should be included in your bibliography.

Footnote numbers should appear in superscript (e.g. 11 ). You can use the ‘Insert footnote’ button in Word to do this automatically; it’s in the ‘References’ tab at the top.

Footnotes always appear after the quote or paraphrase they relate to. MHRA generally recommends placing footnote numbers at the end of the sentence, immediately after any closing punctuation, like this. 12

In situations where this might be awkward or misleading, such as a long sentence containing multiple quotations, footnotes can also be placed at the end of a clause mid-sentence, like this; 13 note that they still come after any punctuation.

When a source has two or three authors, name all of them in your MHRA references . When there are four or more, use only the first name, followed by ‘and others’:

Note that in the bibliography, only the author listed first has their name inverted. The names of additional authors and those of translators or editors are written normally.

A citation should appear wherever you use information or ideas from a source, whether by quoting or paraphrasing its content.

In Vancouver style , you have some flexibility about where the citation number appears in the sentence – usually directly after mentioning the author’s name is best, but simply placing it at the end of the sentence is an acceptable alternative, as long as it’s clear what it relates to.

In Vancouver style , when you refer to a source with multiple authors in your text, you should only name the first author followed by ‘et al.’. This applies even when there are only two authors.

In your reference list, include up to six authors. For sources with seven or more authors, list the first six followed by ‘et al.’.

The words ‘ dissertation ’ and ‘thesis’ both refer to a large written research project undertaken to complete a degree, but they are used differently depending on the country:

• In the UK, you write a dissertation at the end of a bachelor’s or master’s degree, and you write a thesis to complete a PhD.
• In the US, it’s the other way around: you may write a thesis at the end of a bachelor’s or master’s degree, and you write a dissertation to complete a PhD.

The main difference is in terms of scale – a dissertation is usually much longer than the other essays you complete during your degree.

Another key difference is that you are given much more independence when working on a dissertation. You choose your own dissertation topic , and you have to conduct the research and write the dissertation yourself (with some assistance from your supervisor).

Dissertation word counts vary widely across different fields, institutions, and levels of education:

• An undergraduate dissertation is typically 8,000–15,000 words
• A master’s dissertation is typically 12,000–50,000 words
• A PhD thesis is typically book-length: 70,000–100,000 words

However, none of these are strict guidelines – your word count may be lower or higher than the numbers stated here. Always check the guidelines provided by your university to determine how long your own dissertation should be.

At the bachelor’s and master’s levels, the dissertation is usually the main focus of your final year. You might work on it (alongside other classes) for the entirety of the final year, or for the last six months. This includes formulating an idea, doing the research, and writing up.

A PhD thesis takes a longer time, as the thesis is the main focus of the degree. A PhD thesis might be being formulated and worked on for the whole four years of the degree program. The writing process alone can take around 18 months.

References should be included in your text whenever you use words, ideas, or information from a source. A source can be anything from a book or journal article to a website or YouTube video.

If you don’t acknowledge your sources, you can get in trouble for plagiarism .

Your university should tell you which referencing style to follow. If you’re unsure, check with a supervisor. Commonly used styles include:

• Harvard referencing , the most commonly used style in UK universities.
• MHRA , used in humanities subjects.
• APA , used in the social sciences.
• Vancouver , used in biomedicine.
• OSCOLA , used in law.

Your university may have its own referencing style guide.

If you are allowed to choose which style to follow, we recommend Harvard referencing, as it is a straightforward and widely used style.

In Harvard style , when you quote directly from a source that includes page numbers, your in-text citation must include a page number. For example: (Smith, 2014, p. 33).

You can also include page numbers to point the reader towards a passage that you paraphrased . If you refer to the general ideas or findings of the source as a whole, you don’t need to include a page number.

When you want to use a quote but can’t access the original source, you can cite it indirectly. In the in-text citation , first mention the source you want to refer to, and then the source in which you found it. For example:

It’s advisable to avoid indirect citations wherever possible, because they suggest you don’t have full knowledge of the sources you’re citing. Only use an indirect citation if you can’t reasonably gain access to the original source.

In Harvard style referencing , to distinguish between two sources by the same author that were published in the same year, you add a different letter after the year for each source:

• (Smith, 2019a)
• (Smith, 2019b)

Add ‘a’ to the first one you cite, ‘b’ to the second, and so on. Do the same in your bibliography or reference list .

To create a hanging indent for your bibliography or reference list :

• Highlight all the entries
• Click on the arrow in the bottom-right corner of the ‘Paragraph’ tab in the top menu.
• In the pop-up window, under ‘Special’ in the ‘Indentation’ section, use the drop-down menu to select ‘Hanging’.
• Then close the window with ‘OK’.

Though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, there is a difference in meaning:

• A reference list only includes sources cited in the text – every entry corresponds to an in-text citation .
• A bibliography also includes other sources which were consulted during the research but not cited.

It’s important to assess the reliability of information found online. Look for sources from established publications and institutions with expertise (e.g. peer-reviewed journals and government agencies).

The CRAAP test (currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose) can aid you in assessing sources, as can our list of credible sources . You should generally avoid citing websites like Wikipedia that can be edited by anyone – instead, look for the original source of the information in the “References” section.

You can generally omit page numbers in your in-text citations of online sources which don’t have them. But when you quote or paraphrase a specific passage from a particularly long online source, it’s useful to find an alternate location marker.

For text-based sources, you can use paragraph numbers (e.g. ‘para. 4’) or headings (e.g. ‘under “Methodology”’). With video or audio sources, use a timestamp (e.g. ‘10:15’).

In the acknowledgements of your thesis or dissertation, you should first thank those who helped you academically or professionally, such as your supervisor, funders, and other academics.

Then you can include personal thanks to friends, family members, or anyone else who supported you during the process.

Yes, it’s important to thank your supervisor(s) in the acknowledgements section of your thesis or dissertation .

Even if you feel your supervisor did not contribute greatly to the final product, you still should acknowledge them, if only for a very brief thank you. If you do not include your supervisor, it may be seen as a snub.

The acknowledgements are generally included at the very beginning of your thesis or dissertation, directly after the title page and before the abstract .

In a thesis or dissertation, the acknowledgements should usually be no longer than one page. There is no minimum length.

You may acknowledge God in your thesis or dissertation acknowledgements , but be sure to follow academic convention by also thanking the relevant members of academia, as well as family, colleagues, and friends who helped you.

All level 1 and 2 headings should be included in your table of contents . That means the titles of your chapters and the main sections within them.

The contents should also include all appendices and the lists of tables and figures, if applicable, as well as your reference list .

Do not include the acknowledgements or abstract   in the table of contents.

To automatically insert a table of contents in Microsoft Word, follow these steps:

• Apply heading styles throughout the document.
• In the references section in the ribbon, locate the Table of Contents group.
• Click the arrow next to the Table of Contents icon and select Custom Table of Contents.
• Select which levels of headings you would like to include in the table of contents.

Make sure to update your table of contents if you move text or change headings. To update, simply right click and select Update Field.

The table of contents in a thesis or dissertation always goes between your abstract and your introduction.

An abbreviation is a shortened version of an existing word, such as Dr for Doctor. In contrast, an acronym uses the first letter of each word to create a wholly new word, such as UNESCO (an acronym for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

Your dissertation sometimes contains a list of abbreviations .

As a rule of thumb, write the explanation in full the first time you use an acronym or abbreviation. You can then proceed with the shortened version. However, if the abbreviation is very common (like UK or PC), then you can just use the abbreviated version straight away.

Be sure to add each abbreviation in your list of abbreviations !

If you only used a few abbreviations in your thesis or dissertation, you don’t necessarily need to include a list of abbreviations .

If your abbreviations are numerous, or if you think they won’t be known to your audience, it’s never a bad idea to add one. They can also improve readability, minimising confusion about abbreviations unfamiliar to your reader.

A list of abbreviations is a list of all the abbreviations you used in your thesis or dissertation. It should appear at the beginning of your document, immediately after your table of contents . It should always be in alphabetical order.

Fishbone diagrams have a few different names that are used interchangeably, including herringbone diagram, cause-and-effect diagram, and Ishikawa diagram.

These are all ways to refer to the same thing– a problem-solving approach that uses a fish-shaped diagram to model possible root causes of problems and troubleshoot solutions.

Fishbone diagrams (also called herringbone diagrams, cause-and-effect diagrams, and Ishikawa diagrams) are most popular in fields of quality management. They are also commonly used in nursing and healthcare, or as a brainstorming technique for students.

Some synonyms and near synonyms of among include:

• In the company of
• In the middle of
• Surrounded by

Some synonyms and near synonyms of between  include:

• In the space separating
• In the time separating

In spite of   is a preposition used to mean ‘ regardless of ‘, ‘notwithstanding’, or ‘even though’.

It’s always used in a subordinate clause to contrast with the information given in the main clause of a sentence (e.g., ‘Amy continued to watch TV, in spite of the time’).

Despite   is a preposition used to mean ‘ regardless of ‘, ‘notwithstanding’, or ‘even though’.

It’s used in a subordinate clause to contrast with information given in the main clause of a sentence (e.g., ‘Despite the stress, Joe loves his job’).

‘Log in’ is a phrasal verb meaning ‘connect to an electronic device, system, or app’. The preposition ‘to’ is often used directly after the verb; ‘in’ and ‘to’ should be written as two separate words (e.g., ‘ log in to the app to update privacy settings’).

‘Log into’ is sometimes used instead of ‘log in to’, but this is generally considered incorrect (as is ‘login to’).

Some synonyms and near synonyms of ensure include:

• Make certain

Some synonyms and near synonyms of assure  include:

Rest assured is an expression meaning ‘you can be certain’ (e.g., ‘Rest assured, I will find your cat’). ‘Assured’ is the adjectival form of the verb assure , meaning ‘convince’ or ‘persuade’.

Some synonyms and near synonyms for council include:

There are numerous synonyms and near synonyms for the two meanings of counsel :

AI writing tools can be used to perform a variety of tasks.

Generative AI writing tools (like ChatGPT ) generate text based on human inputs and can be used for interactive learning, to provide feedback, or to generate research questions or outlines.

These tools can also be used to paraphrase or summarise text or to identify grammar and punctuation mistakes. Y ou can also use Scribbr’s free paraphrasing tool , summarising tool , and grammar checker , which are designed specifically for these purposes.

Using AI writing tools (like ChatGPT ) to write your essay is usually considered plagiarism and may result in penalisation, unless it is allowed by your university. Text generated by AI tools is based on existing texts and therefore cannot provide unique insights. Furthermore, these outputs sometimes contain factual inaccuracies or grammar mistakes.

However, AI writing tools can be used effectively as a source of feedback and inspiration for your writing (e.g., to generate research questions ). Other AI tools, like grammar checkers, can help identify and eliminate grammar and punctuation mistakes to enhance your writing.

The Scribbr Knowledge Base is a collection of free resources to help you succeed in academic research, writing, and citation. Every week, we publish helpful step-by-step guides, clear examples, simple templates, engaging videos, and more.

The Knowledge Base is for students at all levels. Whether you’re writing your first essay, working on your bachelor’s or master’s dissertation, or getting to grips with your PhD research, we’ve got you covered.

As well as the Knowledge Base, Scribbr provides many other tools and services to support you in academic writing and citation:

• Create your citations and manage your reference list with our free Reference Generators in APA and MLA style.
• Scan your paper for in-text citation errors and inconsistencies with our innovative APA Citation Checker .
• Avoid accidental plagiarism with our reliable Plagiarism Checker .
• Polish your writing and get feedback on structure and clarity with our Proofreading & Editing services .

Yes! We’re happy for educators to use our content, and we’ve even adapted some of our articles into ready-made lecture slides .

You are free to display, distribute, and adapt Scribbr materials in your classes or upload them in private learning environments like Blackboard. We only ask that you credit Scribbr for any content you use.

We’re always striving to improve the Knowledge Base. If you have an idea for a topic we should cover, or you notice a mistake in any of our articles, let us know by emailing [email protected] .

The consequences of plagiarism vary depending on the type of plagiarism and the context in which it occurs. For example, submitting a whole paper by someone else will have the most severe consequences, while accidental citation errors are considered less serious.

If you’re a student, then you might fail the course, be suspended or expelled, or be obligated to attend a workshop on plagiarism. It depends on whether it’s your first offence or you’ve done it before.

As an academic or professional, plagiarising seriously damages your reputation. You might also lose your research funding or your job, and you could even face legal consequences for copyright infringement.

Paraphrasing without crediting the original author is a form of plagiarism , because you’re presenting someone else’s ideas as if they were your own.

However, paraphrasing is not plagiarism if you correctly reference the source . This means including an in-text referencing and a full reference , formatted according to your required citation style (e.g., Harvard , Vancouver ).

As well as referencing your source, make sure that any paraphrased text is completely rewritten in your own words.

Accidental plagiarism is one of the most common examples of plagiarism . Perhaps you forgot to cite a source, or paraphrased something a bit too closely. Maybe you can’t remember where you got an idea from, and aren’t totally sure if it’s original or not.

These all count as plagiarism, even though you didn’t do it on purpose. When in doubt, make sure you’re citing your sources . Also consider running your work through a plagiarism checker tool prior to submission, which work by using advanced database software to scan for matches between your text and existing texts.

Scribbr’s Plagiarism Checker takes less than 10 minutes and can help you turn in your paper with confidence.

The accuracy depends on the plagiarism checker you use. Per our in-depth research , Scribbr is the most accurate plagiarism checker. Many free plagiarism checkers fail to detect all plagiarism or falsely flag text as plagiarism.

Plagiarism checkers work by using advanced database software to scan for matches between your text and existing texts. Their accuracy is determined by two factors: the algorithm (which recognises the plagiarism) and the size of the database (with which your document is compared).

To avoid plagiarism when summarising an article or other source, follow these two rules:

• Write the summary entirely in your own words by   paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
• Reference the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

Plagiarism can be detected by your professor or readers if the tone, formatting, or style of your text is different in different parts of your paper, or if they’re familiar with the plagiarised source.

Many universities also use   plagiarism detection software like Turnitin’s, which compares your text to a large database of other sources, flagging any similarities that come up.

It can be easier than you think to commit plagiarism by accident. Consider using a   plagiarism checker prior to submitting your essay to ensure you haven’t missed any citations.

Some examples of plagiarism include:

• Copying and pasting a Wikipedia article into the body of an assignment
• Quoting a source without including a citation
• Not paraphrasing a source properly (e.g. maintaining wording too close to the original)
• Forgetting to cite the source of an idea

The most surefire way to   avoid plagiarism is to always cite your sources . When in doubt, cite!

Global plagiarism means taking an entire work written by someone else and passing it off as your own. This can include getting someone else to write an essay or assignment for you, or submitting a text you found online as your own work.

Global plagiarism is one of the most serious types of plagiarism because it involves deliberately and directly lying about the authorship of a work. It can have severe consequences for students and professionals alike.

Verbatim plagiarism means copying text from a source and pasting it directly into your own document without giving proper credit.

If the structure and the majority of the words are the same as in the original source, then you are committing verbatim plagiarism. This is the case even if you delete a few words or replace them with synonyms.

If you want to use an author’s exact words, you need to quote the original source by putting the copied text in quotation marks and including an   in-text citation .

Patchwork plagiarism , also called mosaic plagiarism, means copying phrases, passages, or ideas from various existing sources and combining them to create a new text. This includes slightly rephrasing some of the content, while keeping many of the same words and the same structure as the original.

While this type of plagiarism is more insidious than simply copying and pasting directly from a source, plagiarism checkers like Turnitin’s can still easily detect it.

To avoid plagiarism in any form, remember to reference your sources .

Yes, reusing your own work without citation is considered self-plagiarism . This can range from resubmitting an entire assignment to reusing passages or data from something you’ve handed in previously.

Self-plagiarism often has the same consequences as other types of plagiarism . If you want to reuse content you wrote in the past, make sure to check your university’s policy or consult your professor.

If you are reusing content or data you used in a previous assignment, make sure to cite yourself. You can cite yourself the same way you would cite any other source: simply follow the directions for the citation style you are using.

Keep in mind that reusing prior content can be considered self-plagiarism , so make sure you ask your instructor or consult your university’s handbook prior to doing so.

Most institutions have an internal database of previously submitted student assignments. Turnitin can check for self-plagiarism by comparing your paper against this database. If you’ve reused parts of an assignment you already submitted, it will flag any similarities as potential plagiarism.

Online plagiarism checkers don’t have access to your institution’s database, so they can’t detect self-plagiarism of unpublished work. If you’re worried about accidentally self-plagiarising, you can use Scribbr’s Self-Plagiarism Checker to upload your unpublished documents and check them for similarities.

Plagiarism has serious consequences and can be illegal in certain scenarios.

While most of the time plagiarism in an undergraduate setting is not illegal, plagiarism or self-plagiarism in a professional academic setting can lead to legal action, including copyright infringement and fraud. Many scholarly journals do not allow you to submit the same work to more than one journal, and if you do not credit a coauthor, you could be legally defrauding them.

Even if you aren’t breaking the law, plagiarism can seriously impact your academic career. While the exact consequences of plagiarism vary by institution and severity, common consequences include a lower grade, automatically failing a course, academic suspension or probation, and even expulsion.

Self-plagiarism means recycling work that you’ve previously published or submitted as an assignment. It’s considered academic dishonesty to present something as brand new when you’ve already gotten credit and perhaps feedback for it in the past.

If you want to refer to ideas or data from previous work, be sure to cite yourself.

Academic integrity means being honest, ethical, and thorough in your academic work. To maintain academic integrity, you should avoid misleading your readers about any part of your research and refrain from offences like plagiarism and contract cheating, which are examples of academic misconduct.

Academic dishonesty refers to deceitful or misleading behavior in an academic setting. Academic dishonesty can occur intentionally or unintentionally, and it varies in severity.

It can encompass paying for a pre-written essay, cheating on an exam, or committing plagiarism . It can also include helping others cheat, copying a friend’s homework answers, or even pretending to be sick to miss an exam.

Academic dishonesty doesn’t just occur in a classroom setting, but also in research and other academic-adjacent fields.

Consequences of academic dishonesty depend on the severity of the offence and your institution’s policy. They can range from a warning for a first offence to a failing grade in a course to expulsion from your university.

For those in certain fields, such as nursing, engineering, or lab sciences, not learning fundamentals properly can directly impact the health and safety of others. For those working in academia or research, academic dishonesty impacts your professional reputation, leading others to doubt your future work.

Academic dishonesty can be intentional or unintentional, ranging from something as simple as claiming to have read something you didn’t to copying your neighbour’s answers on an exam.

You can commit academic dishonesty with the best of intentions, such as helping a friend cheat on a paper. Severe academic dishonesty can include buying a pre-written essay or the answers to a multiple-choice test, or falsifying a medical emergency to avoid taking a final exam.

Plagiarism means presenting someone else’s work as your own without giving proper credit to the original author. In academic writing, plagiarism involves using words, ideas, or information from a source without including a citation .

Plagiarism can have serious consequences , even when it’s done accidentally. To avoid plagiarism, it’s important to keep track of your sources and cite them correctly.

Common knowledge does not need to be cited. However, you should be extra careful when deciding what counts as common knowledge.

Common knowledge encompasses information that the average educated reader would accept as true without needing the extra validation of a source or citation.

Common knowledge should be widely known, undisputed, and easily verified. When in doubt, always cite your sources.

Most online plagiarism checkers only have access to public databases, whose software doesn’t allow you to compare two documents for plagiarism.

However, in addition to our Plagiarism Checker , Scribbr also offers an Self-Plagiarism Checker . This is an add-on tool that lets you compare your paper with unpublished or private documents. This way you can rest assured that you haven’t unintentionally plagiarised or self-plagiarised .

Compare two sources for plagiarism

The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question .

• If you want to measure something or test a hypothesis , use quantitative methods . If you want to explore ideas, thoughts, and meanings, use qualitative methods .
• If you want to analyse a large amount of readily available data, use secondary data. If you want data specific to your purposes with control over how they are generated, collect primary data.
• If you want to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables , use experimental methods. If you want to understand the characteristics of a research subject, use descriptive methods.

Methodology refers to the overarching strategy and rationale of your research project . It involves studying the methods used in your field and the theories or principles behind them, in order to develop an approach that matches your objectives.

Methods are the specific tools and procedures you use to collect and analyse data (e.g. experiments, surveys , and statistical tests ).

In shorter scientific papers, where the aim is to report the findings of a specific study, you might simply describe what you did in a methods section .

In a longer or more complex research project, such as a thesis or dissertation , you will probably include a methodology section , where you explain your approach to answering the research questions and cite relevant sources to support your choice of methods.

In mixed methods research , you use both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods to answer your research question .

Data collection is the systematic process by which observations or measurements are gathered in research. It is used in many different contexts by academics, governments, businesses, and other organisations.

There are various approaches to qualitative data analysis , but they all share five steps in common:

• Prepare and organise your data.
• Review and explore your data.
• Develop a data coding system.
• Assign codes to the data.
• Identify recurring themes.

The specifics of each step depend on the focus of the analysis. Some common approaches include textual analysis , thematic analysis , and discourse analysis .

There are five common approaches to qualitative research :

• Grounded theory involves collecting data in order to develop new theories.
• Ethnography involves immersing yourself in a group or organisation to understand its culture.
• Narrative research involves interpreting stories to understand how people make sense of their experiences and perceptions.
• Phenomenological research involves investigating phenomena through people’s lived experiences.
• Action research links theory and practice in several cycles to drive innovative changes.

Hypothesis testing is a formal procedure for investigating our ideas about the world using statistics. It is used by scientists to test specific predictions, called hypotheses , by calculating how likely it is that a pattern or relationship between variables could have arisen by chance.

Operationalisation means turning abstract conceptual ideas into measurable observations.

For example, the concept of social anxiety isn’t directly observable, but it can be operationally defined in terms of self-rating scores, behavioural avoidance of crowded places, or physical anxiety symptoms in social situations.

Before collecting data , it’s important to consider how you will operationalise the variables that you want to measure.

Triangulation in research means using multiple datasets, methods, theories and/or investigators to address a research question. It’s a research strategy that can help you enhance the validity and credibility of your findings.

Triangulation is mainly used in qualitative research , but it’s also commonly applied in quantitative research . Mixed methods research always uses triangulation.

These are four of the most common mixed methods designs :

• Convergent parallel: Quantitative and qualitative data are collected at the same time and analysed separately. After both analyses are complete, compare your results to draw overall conclusions. 
• Embedded: Quantitative and qualitative data are collected at the same time, but within a larger quantitative or qualitative design. One type of data is secondary to the other.
• Explanatory sequential: Quantitative data is collected and analysed first, followed by qualitative data. You can use this design if you think your qualitative data will explain and contextualise your quantitative findings.
• Exploratory sequential: Qualitative data is collected and analysed first, followed by quantitative data. You can use this design if you think the quantitative data will confirm or validate your qualitative findings.

An observational study could be a good fit for your research if your research question is based on things you observe. If you have ethical, logistical, or practical concerns that make an experimental design challenging, consider an observational study. Remember that in an observational study, it is critical that there be no interference or manipulation of the research subjects. Since it’s not an experiment, there are no control or treatment groups either.

The key difference between observational studies and experiments is that, done correctly, an observational study will never influence the responses or behaviours of participants. Experimental designs will have a treatment condition applied to at least a portion of participants.

Exploratory research explores the main aspects of a new or barely researched question.

Explanatory research explains the causes and effects of an already widely researched question.

Experimental designs are a set of procedures that you plan in order to examine the relationship between variables that interest you.

To design a successful experiment, first identify:

• A testable hypothesis
• One or more independent variables that you will manipulate
• One or more dependent variables that you will measure

When designing the experiment, first decide:

• How your variable(s) will be manipulated
• How you will control for any potential confounding or lurking variables
• How many subjects you will include
• How you will assign treatments to your subjects

There are four main types of triangulation :

• Data triangulation : Using data from different times, spaces, and people
• Investigator triangulation : Involving multiple researchers in collecting or analysing data
• Theory triangulation : Using varying theoretical perspectives in your research
• Methodological triangulation : Using different methodologies to approach the same topic

Triangulation can help:

• Reduce bias that comes from using a single method, theory, or investigator
• Enhance validity by approaching the same topic with different tools
• Establish credibility by giving you a complete picture of the research problem

But triangulation can also pose problems:

• It’s time-consuming and labour-intensive, often involving an interdisciplinary team.
• Your results may be inconsistent or even contradictory.

A confounding variable , also called a confounder or confounding factor, is a third variable in a study examining a potential cause-and-effect relationship.

A confounding variable is related to both the supposed cause and the supposed effect of the study. It can be difficult to separate the true effect of the independent variable from the effect of the confounding variable.

In your research design , it’s important to identify potential confounding variables and plan how you will reduce their impact.

In a between-subjects design , every participant experiences only one condition, and researchers assess group differences between participants in various conditions.

In a within-subjects design , each participant experiences all conditions, and researchers test the same participants repeatedly for differences between conditions.

The word ‘between’ means that you’re comparing different conditions between groups, while the word ‘within’ means you’re comparing different conditions within the same group.

A quasi-experiment is a type of research design that attempts to establish a cause-and-effect relationship. The main difference between this and a true experiment is that the groups are not randomly assigned.

In experimental research, random assignment is a way of placing participants from your sample into different groups using randomisation. With this method, every member of the sample has a known or equal chance of being placed in a control group or an experimental group.

Quasi-experimental design is most useful in situations where it would be unethical or impractical to run a true experiment .

Quasi-experiments have lower internal validity than true experiments, but they often have higher external validity  as they can use real-world interventions instead of artificial laboratory settings.

Within-subjects designs have many potential threats to internal validity , but they are also very statistically powerful .

Advantages:

• Only requires small samples
• Statistically powerful
• Removes the effects of individual differences on the outcomes

Disadvantages:

• Internal validity threats reduce the likelihood of establishing a direct relationship between variables
• Time-related effects, such as growth, can influence the outcomes
• Carryover effects mean that the specific order of different treatments affect the outcomes

Yes. Between-subjects and within-subjects designs can be combined in a single study when you have two or more independent variables (a factorial design). In a mixed factorial design, one variable is altered between subjects and another is altered within subjects.

In a factorial design, multiple independent variables are tested.

If you test two variables, each level of one independent variable is combined with each level of the other independent variable to create different conditions.

While a between-subjects design has fewer threats to internal validity , it also requires more participants for high statistical power than a within-subjects design .

• Prevents carryover effects of learning and fatigue.
• Shorter study duration.
• Needs larger samples for high power.
• Uses more resources to recruit participants, administer sessions, cover costs, etc.
• Individual differences may be an alternative explanation for results.

Samples are used to make inferences about populations . Samples are easier to collect data from because they are practical, cost-effective, convenient, and manageable.

Probability sampling means that every member of the target population has a known chance of being included in the sample.

Probability sampling methods include simple random sampling , systematic sampling , stratified sampling , and cluster sampling .

In non-probability sampling , the sample is selected based on non-random criteria, and not every member of the population has a chance of being included.

Common non-probability sampling methods include convenience sampling , voluntary response sampling, purposive sampling , snowball sampling , and quota sampling .

In multistage sampling , or multistage cluster sampling, you draw a sample from a population using smaller and smaller groups at each stage.

This method is often used to collect data from a large, geographically spread group of people in national surveys, for example. You take advantage of hierarchical groupings (e.g., from county to city to neighbourhood) to create a sample that’s less expensive and time-consuming to collect data from.

Sampling bias occurs when some members of a population are systematically more likely to be selected in a sample than others.

Simple random sampling is a type of probability sampling in which the researcher randomly selects a subset of participants from a population . Each member of the population has an equal chance of being selected. Data are then collected from as large a percentage as possible of this random subset.

The American Community Survey  is an example of simple random sampling . In order to collect detailed data on the population of the US, the Census Bureau officials randomly select 3.5 million households per year and use a variety of methods to convince them to fill out the survey.

If properly implemented, simple random sampling is usually the best sampling method for ensuring both internal and external validity . However, it can sometimes be impractical and expensive to implement, depending on the size of the population to be studied,

If you have a list of every member of the population and the ability to reach whichever members are selected, you can use simple random sampling.

Cluster sampling is more time- and cost-efficient than other probability sampling methods , particularly when it comes to large samples spread across a wide geographical area.

However, it provides less statistical certainty than other methods, such as simple random sampling , because it is difficult to ensure that your clusters properly represent the population as a whole.

There are three types of cluster sampling : single-stage, double-stage and multi-stage clustering. In all three types, you first divide the population into clusters, then randomly select clusters for use in your sample.

• In single-stage sampling , you collect data from every unit within the selected clusters.
• In double-stage sampling , you select a random sample of units from within the clusters.
• In multi-stage sampling , you repeat the procedure of randomly sampling elements from within the clusters until you have reached a manageable sample.

Cluster sampling is a probability sampling method in which you divide a population into clusters, such as districts or schools, and then randomly select some of these clusters as your sample.

The clusters should ideally each be mini-representations of the population as a whole.

In multistage sampling , you can use probability or non-probability sampling methods.

For a probability sample, you have to probability sampling at every stage. You can mix it up by using simple random sampling , systematic sampling , or stratified sampling to select units at different stages, depending on what is applicable and relevant to your study.

Multistage sampling can simplify data collection when you have large, geographically spread samples, and you can obtain a probability sample without a complete sampling frame.

But multistage sampling may not lead to a representative sample, and larger samples are needed for multistage samples to achieve the statistical properties of simple random samples .

In stratified sampling , researchers divide subjects into subgroups called strata based on characteristics that they share (e.g., race, gender, educational attainment).

Once divided, each subgroup is randomly sampled using another probability sampling method .

You should use stratified sampling when your sample can be divided into mutually exclusive and exhaustive subgroups that you believe will take on different mean values for the variable that you’re studying.

Using stratified sampling will allow you to obtain more precise (with lower variance ) statistical estimates of whatever you are trying to measure.

For example, say you want to investigate how income differs based on educational attainment, but you know that this relationship can vary based on race. Using stratified sampling, you can ensure you obtain a large enough sample from each racial group, allowing you to draw more precise conclusions.

Yes, you can create a stratified sample using multiple characteristics, but you must ensure that every participant in your study belongs to one and only one subgroup. In this case, you multiply the numbers of subgroups for each characteristic to get the total number of groups.

For example, if you were stratifying by location with three subgroups (urban, rural, or suburban) and marital status with five subgroups (single, divorced, widowed, married, or partnered), you would have 3 × 5 = 15 subgroups.

There are three key steps in systematic sampling :

• Define and list your population , ensuring that it is not ordered in a cyclical or periodic order.
• Decide on your sample size and calculate your interval, k , by dividing your population by your target sample size.
• Choose every k th member of the population as your sample.

Systematic sampling is a probability sampling method where researchers select members of the population at a regular interval – for example, by selecting every 15th person on a list of the population. If the population is in a random order, this can imitate the benefits of simple random sampling .

Populations are used when a research question requires data from every member of the population. This is usually only feasible when the population is small and easily accessible.

A statistic refers to measures about the sample , while a parameter refers to measures about the population .

A sampling error is the difference between a population parameter and a sample statistic .

There are eight threats to internal validity : history, maturation, instrumentation, testing, selection bias , regression to the mean, social interaction, and attrition .

Internal validity is the extent to which you can be confident that a cause-and-effect relationship established in a study cannot be explained by other factors.

Attrition bias is a threat to internal validity . In experiments, differential rates of attrition between treatment and control groups can skew results.

This bias can affect the relationship between your independent and dependent variables . It can make variables appear to be correlated when they are not, or vice versa.

The external validity of a study is the extent to which you can generalise your findings to different groups of people, situations, and measures.

The two types of external validity are population validity (whether you can generalise to other groups of people) and ecological validity (whether you can generalise to other situations and settings).

There are seven threats to external validity : selection bias , history, experimenter effect, Hawthorne effect , testing effect, aptitude-treatment, and situation effect.

Attrition bias can skew your sample so that your final sample differs significantly from your original sample. Your sample is biased because some groups from your population are underrepresented.

With a biased final sample, you may not be able to generalise your findings to the original population that you sampled from, so your external validity is compromised.

Construct validity is about how well a test measures the concept it was designed to evaluate. It’s one of four types of measurement validity , which includes construct validity, face validity , and criterion validity.

There are two subtypes of construct validity.

• Convergent validity : The extent to which your measure corresponds to measures of related constructs
• Discriminant validity: The extent to which your measure is unrelated or negatively related to measures of distinct constructs

When designing or evaluating a measure, construct validity helps you ensure you’re actually measuring the construct you’re interested in. If you don’t have construct validity, you may inadvertently measure unrelated or distinct constructs and lose precision in your research.

Construct validity is often considered the overarching type of measurement validity ,  because it covers all of the other types. You need to have face validity , content validity, and criterion validity to achieve construct validity.

Statistical analyses are often applied to test validity with data from your measures. You test convergent validity and discriminant validity with correlations to see if results from your test are positively or negatively related to those of other established tests.

You can also use regression analyses to assess whether your measure is actually predictive of outcomes that you expect it to predict theoretically. A regression analysis that supports your expectations strengthens your claim of construct validity .

Face validity is about whether a test appears to measure what it’s supposed to measure. This type of validity is concerned with whether a measure seems relevant and appropriate for what it’s assessing only on the surface.

Face validity is important because it’s a simple first step to measuring the overall validity of a test or technique. It’s a relatively intuitive, quick, and easy way to start checking whether a new measure seems useful at first glance.

Good face validity means that anyone who reviews your measure says that it seems to be measuring what it’s supposed to. With poor face validity, someone reviewing your measure may be left confused about what you’re measuring and why you’re using this method.

It’s often best to ask a variety of people to review your measurements. You can ask experts, such as other researchers, or laypeople, such as potential participants, to judge the face validity of tests.

While experts have a deep understanding of research methods , the people you’re studying can provide you with valuable insights you may have missed otherwise.

There are many different types of inductive reasoning that people use formally or informally.

Here are a few common types:

• Inductive generalisation : You use observations about a sample to come to a conclusion about the population it came from.
• Statistical generalisation: You use specific numbers about samples to make statements about populations.
• Causal reasoning: You make cause-and-effect links between different things.
• Sign reasoning: You make a conclusion about a correlational relationship between different things.
• Analogical reasoning: You make a conclusion about something based on its similarities to something else.

Inductive reasoning is a bottom-up approach, while deductive reasoning is top-down.

Inductive reasoning takes you from the specific to the general, while in deductive reasoning, you make inferences by going from general premises to specific conclusions.

In inductive research , you start by making observations or gathering data. Then, you take a broad scan of your data and search for patterns. Finally, you make general conclusions that you might incorporate into theories.

Inductive reasoning is a method of drawing conclusions by going from the specific to the general. It’s usually contrasted with deductive reasoning, where you proceed from general information to specific conclusions.

Inductive reasoning is also called inductive logic or bottom-up reasoning.

Deductive reasoning is a logical approach where you progress from general ideas to specific conclusions. It’s often contrasted with inductive reasoning , where you start with specific observations and form general conclusions.

Deductive reasoning is also called deductive logic.

Deductive reasoning is commonly used in scientific research, and it’s especially associated with quantitative research .

In research, you might have come across something called the hypothetico-deductive method . It’s the scientific method of testing hypotheses to check whether your predictions are substantiated by real-world data.

A dependent variable is what changes as a result of the independent variable manipulation in experiments . It’s what you’re interested in measuring, and it ‘depends’ on your independent variable.

In statistics, dependent variables are also called:

• Response variables (they respond to a change in another variable)
• Outcome variables (they represent the outcome you want to measure)
• Left-hand-side variables (they appear on the left-hand side of a regression equation)

An independent variable is the variable you manipulate, control, or vary in an experimental study to explore its effects. It’s called ‘independent’ because it’s not influenced by any other variables in the study.

Independent variables are also called:

• Explanatory variables (they explain an event or outcome)
• Predictor variables (they can be used to predict the value of a dependent variable)
• Right-hand-side variables (they appear on the right-hand side of a regression equation)

A correlation is usually tested for two variables at a time, but you can test correlations between three or more variables.

On graphs, the explanatory variable is conventionally placed on the x -axis, while the response variable is placed on the y -axis.

• If you have quantitative variables , use a scatterplot or a line graph.
• If your response variable is categorical, use a scatterplot or a line graph.
• If your explanatory variable is categorical, use a bar graph.

The term ‘ explanatory variable ‘ is sometimes preferred over ‘ independent variable ‘ because, in real-world contexts, independent variables are often influenced by other variables. This means they aren’t totally independent.

Multiple independent variables may also be correlated with each other, so ‘explanatory variables’ is a more appropriate term.

The difference between explanatory and response variables is simple:

• An explanatory variable is the expected cause, and it explains the results.
• A response variable is the expected effect, and it responds to other variables.

There are 4 main types of extraneous variables :

• Demand characteristics : Environmental cues that encourage participants to conform to researchers’ expectations
• Experimenter effects : Unintentional actions by researchers that influence study outcomes
• Situational variables : Eenvironmental variables that alter participants’ behaviours
• Participant variables : Any characteristic or aspect of a participant’s background that could affect study results

An extraneous variable is any variable that you’re not investigating that can potentially affect the dependent variable of your research study.

A confounding variable is a type of extraneous variable that not only affects the dependent variable, but is also related to the independent variable.

‘Controlling for a variable’ means measuring extraneous variables and accounting for them statistically to remove their effects on other variables.

Researchers often model control variable data along with independent and dependent variable data in regression analyses and ANCOVAs . That way, you can isolate the control variable’s effects from the relationship between the variables of interest.

Control variables help you establish a correlational or causal relationship between variables by enhancing internal validity .

If you don’t control relevant extraneous variables , they may influence the outcomes of your study, and you may not be able to demonstrate that your results are really an effect of your independent variable .

A control variable is any variable that’s held constant in a research study. It’s not a variable of interest in the study, but it’s controlled because it could influence the outcomes.

In statistics, ordinal and nominal variables are both considered categorical variables .

Even though ordinal data can sometimes be numerical, not all mathematical operations can be performed on them.

In scientific research, concepts are the abstract ideas or phenomena that are being studied (e.g., educational achievement). Variables are properties or characteristics of the concept (e.g., performance at school), while indicators are ways of measuring or quantifying variables (e.g., yearly grade reports).

The process of turning abstract concepts into measurable variables and indicators is called operationalisation .

There are several methods you can use to decrease the impact of confounding variables on your research: restriction, matching, statistical control, and randomisation.

In restriction , you restrict your sample by only including certain subjects that have the same values of potential confounding variables.

In matching , you match each of the subjects in your treatment group with a counterpart in the comparison group. The matched subjects have the same values on any potential confounding variables, and only differ in the independent variable .

In statistical control , you include potential confounders as variables in your regression .

In randomisation , you randomly assign the treatment (or independent variable) in your study to a sufficiently large number of subjects, which allows you to control for all potential confounding variables.

A confounding variable is closely related to both the independent and dependent variables in a study. An independent variable represents the supposed cause , while the dependent variable is the supposed effect . A confounding variable is a third variable that influences both the independent and dependent variables.

Failing to account for confounding variables can cause you to wrongly estimate the relationship between your independent and dependent variables.

To ensure the internal validity of your research, you must consider the impact of confounding variables. If you fail to account for them, you might over- or underestimate the causal relationship between your independent and dependent variables , or even find a causal relationship where none exists.

Yes, but including more than one of either type requires multiple research questions .

For example, if you are interested in the effect of a diet on health, you can use multiple measures of health: blood sugar, blood pressure, weight, pulse, and many more. Each of these is its own dependent variable with its own research question.

You could also choose to look at the effect of exercise levels as well as diet, or even the additional effect of the two combined. Each of these is a separate independent variable .

To ensure the internal validity of an experiment , you should only change one independent variable at a time.

No. The value of a dependent variable depends on an independent variable, so a variable cannot be both independent and dependent at the same time. It must be either the cause or the effect, not both.

You want to find out how blood sugar levels are affected by drinking diet cola and regular cola, so you conduct an experiment .

• The type of cola – diet or regular – is the independent variable .
• The level of blood sugar that you measure is the dependent variable – it changes depending on the type of cola.

Determining cause and effect is one of the most important parts of scientific research. It’s essential to know which is the cause – the independent variable – and which is the effect – the dependent variable.

Quantitative variables are any variables where the data represent amounts (e.g. height, weight, or age).

Categorical variables are any variables where the data represent groups. This includes rankings (e.g. finishing places in a race), classifications (e.g. brands of cereal), and binary outcomes (e.g. coin flips).

You need to know what type of variables you are working with to choose the right statistical test for your data and interpret your results .

Discrete and continuous variables are two types of quantitative variables :

• Discrete variables represent counts (e.g., the number of objects in a collection).
• Continuous variables represent measurable amounts (e.g., water volume or weight).

You can think of independent and dependent variables in terms of cause and effect: an independent variable is the variable you think is the cause , while a dependent variable is the effect .

In an experiment, you manipulate the independent variable and measure the outcome in the dependent variable. For example, in an experiment about the effect of nutrients on crop growth:

• The  independent variable  is the amount of nutrients added to the crop field.
• The  dependent variable is the biomass of the crops at harvest time.

Defining your variables, and deciding how you will manipulate and measure them, is an important part of experimental design .

Including mediators and moderators in your research helps you go beyond studying a simple relationship between two variables for a fuller picture of the real world. They are important to consider when studying complex correlational or causal relationships.

Mediators are part of the causal pathway of an effect, and they tell you how or why an effect takes place. Moderators usually help you judge the external validity of your study by identifying the limitations of when the relationship between variables holds.

If something is a mediating variable :

• It’s caused by the independent variable
• It influences the dependent variable
• When it’s taken into account, the statistical correlation between the independent and dependent variables is higher than when it isn’t considered

A confounder is a third variable that affects variables of interest and makes them seem related when they are not. In contrast, a mediator is the mechanism of a relationship between two variables: it explains the process by which they are related.

A mediator variable explains the process through which two variables are related, while a moderator variable affects the strength and direction of that relationship.

When conducting research, collecting original data has significant advantages:

• You can tailor data collection to your specific research aims (e.g., understanding the needs of your consumers or user testing your website).
• You can control and standardise the process for high reliability and validity (e.g., choosing appropriate measurements and sampling methods ).

However, there are also some drawbacks: data collection can be time-consuming, labour-intensive, and expensive. In some cases, it’s more efficient to use secondary data that has already been collected by someone else, but the data might be less reliable.

A structured interview is a data collection method that relies on asking questions in a set order to collect data on a topic. They are often quantitative in nature. Structured interviews are best used when:

• You already have a very clear understanding of your topic. Perhaps significant research has already been conducted, or you have done some prior research yourself, but you already possess a baseline for designing strong structured questions.
• You are constrained in terms of time or resources and need to analyse your data quickly and efficiently
• Your research question depends on strong parity between participants, with environmental conditions held constant

More flexible interview options include semi-structured interviews , unstructured interviews , and focus groups .

The interviewer effect is a type of bias that emerges when a characteristic of an interviewer (race, age, gender identity, etc.) influences the responses given by the interviewee.

There is a risk of an interviewer effect in all types of interviews , but it can be mitigated by writing really high-quality interview questions.

A semi-structured interview is a blend of structured and unstructured types of interviews. Semi-structured interviews are best used when:

• You have prior interview experience. Spontaneous questions are deceptively challenging, and it’s easy to accidentally ask a leading question or make a participant uncomfortable.
• Your research question is exploratory in nature. Participant answers can guide future research questions and help you develop a more robust knowledge base for future research.

An unstructured interview is the most flexible type of interview, but it is not always the best fit for your research topic.

Unstructured interviews are best used when:

• You are an experienced interviewer and have a very strong background in your research topic, since it is challenging to ask spontaneous, colloquial questions
• Your research question is exploratory in nature. While you may have developed hypotheses, you are open to discovering new or shifting viewpoints through the interview process.
• You are seeking descriptive data, and are ready to ask questions that will deepen and contextualise your initial thoughts and hypotheses
• Your research depends on forming connections with your participants and making them feel comfortable revealing deeper emotions, lived experiences, or thoughts

The four most common types of interviews are:

• Structured interviews : The questions are predetermined in both topic and order.
• Semi-structured interviews : A few questions are predetermined, but other questions aren’t planned.
• Unstructured interviews : None of the questions are predetermined.
• Focus group interviews : The questions are presented to a group instead of one individual.

A focus group is a research method that brings together a small group of people to answer questions in a moderated setting. The group is chosen due to predefined demographic traits, and the questions are designed to shed light on a topic of interest. It is one of four types of interviews .

Social desirability bias is the tendency for interview participants to give responses that will be viewed favourably by the interviewer or other participants. It occurs in all types of interviews and surveys , but is most common in semi-structured interviews , unstructured interviews , and focus groups .

Social desirability bias can be mitigated by ensuring participants feel at ease and comfortable sharing their views. Make sure to pay attention to your own body language and any physical or verbal cues, such as nodding or widening your eyes.

This type of bias in research can also occur in observations if the participants know they’re being observed. They might alter their behaviour accordingly.

As a rule of thumb, questions related to thoughts, beliefs, and feelings work well in focus groups . Take your time formulating strong questions, paying special attention to phrasing. Be careful to avoid leading questions , which can bias your responses.

Overall, your focus group questions should be:

• Open-ended and flexible
• Impossible to answer with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (questions that start with ‘why’ or ‘how’ are often best)
• Unambiguous, getting straight to the point while still stimulating discussion
• Unbiased and neutral

The third variable and directionality problems are two main reasons why correlation isn’t causation .

The third variable problem means that a confounding variable affects both variables to make them seem causally related when they are not.

The directionality problem is when two variables correlate and might actually have a causal relationship, but it’s impossible to conclude which variable causes changes in the other.

Controlled experiments establish causality, whereas correlational studies only show associations between variables.

• In an experimental design , you manipulate an independent variable and measure its effect on a dependent variable. Other variables are controlled so they can’t impact the results.
• In a correlational design , you measure variables without manipulating any of them. You can test whether your variables change together, but you can’t be sure that one variable caused a change in another.

In general, correlational research is high in external validity while experimental research is high in internal validity .

A correlation coefficient is a single number that describes the strength and direction of the relationship between your variables.

Different types of correlation coefficients might be appropriate for your data based on their levels of measurement and distributions . The Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (Pearson’s r ) is commonly used to assess a linear relationship between two quantitative variables.

A correlational research design investigates relationships between two variables (or more) without the researcher controlling or manipulating any of them. It’s a non-experimental type of quantitative research .

A correlation reflects the strength and/or direction of the association between two or more variables.

• A positive correlation means that both variables change in the same direction.
• A negative correlation means that the variables change in opposite directions.
• A zero correlation means there’s no relationship between the variables.

Longitudinal studies can last anywhere from weeks to decades, although they tend to be at least a year long.

The 1970 British Cohort Study , which has collected data on the lives of 17,000 Brits since their births in 1970, is one well-known example of a longitudinal study .

Longitudinal studies are better to establish the correct sequence of events, identify changes over time, and provide insight into cause-and-effect relationships, but they also tend to be more expensive and time-consuming than other types of studies.

Longitudinal studies and cross-sectional studies are two different types of research design . In a cross-sectional study you collect data from a population at a specific point in time; in a longitudinal study you repeatedly collect data from the same sample over an extended period of time.

Cross-sectional studies cannot establish a cause-and-effect relationship or analyse behaviour over a period of time. To investigate cause and effect, you need to do a longitudinal study or an experimental study .

Cross-sectional studies are less expensive and time-consuming than many other types of study. They can provide useful insights into a population’s characteristics and identify correlations for further research.

Sometimes only cross-sectional data are available for analysis; other times your research question may only require a cross-sectional study to answer it.

A hypothesis states your predictions about what your research will find. It is a tentative answer to your research question that has not yet been tested. For some research projects, you might have to write several hypotheses that address different aspects of your research question.

A hypothesis is not just a guess. It should be based on existing theories and knowledge. It also has to be testable, which means you can support or refute it through scientific research methods (such as experiments, observations, and statistical analysis of data).

A research hypothesis is your proposed answer to your research question. The research hypothesis usually includes an explanation (‘ x affects y because …’).

A statistical hypothesis, on the other hand, is a mathematical statement about a population parameter. Statistical hypotheses always come in pairs: the null and alternative hypotheses. In a well-designed study , the statistical hypotheses correspond logically to the research hypothesis.

Individual Likert-type questions are generally considered ordinal data , because the items have clear rank order, but don’t have an even distribution.

Overall Likert scale scores are sometimes treated as interval data. These scores are considered to have directionality and even spacing between them.

The type of data determines what statistical tests you should use to analyse your data.

A Likert scale is a rating scale that quantitatively assesses opinions, attitudes, or behaviours. It is made up of four or more questions that measure a single attitude or trait when response scores are combined.

To use a Likert scale in a survey , you present participants with Likert-type questions or statements, and a continuum of items, usually with five or seven possible responses, to capture their degree of agreement.

A questionnaire is a data collection tool or instrument, while a survey is an overarching research method that involves collecting and analysing data from people using questionnaires.

A true experiment (aka a controlled experiment) always includes at least one control group that doesn’t receive the experimental treatment.

However, some experiments use a within-subjects design to test treatments without a control group. In these designs, you usually compare one group’s outcomes before and after a treatment (instead of comparing outcomes between different groups).

For strong internal validity , it’s usually best to include a control group if possible. Without a control group, it’s harder to be certain that the outcome was caused by the experimental treatment and not by other variables.

An experimental group, also known as a treatment group, receives the treatment whose effect researchers wish to study, whereas a control group does not. They should be identical in all other ways.

In a controlled experiment , all extraneous variables are held constant so that they can’t influence the results. Controlled experiments require:

• A control group that receives a standard treatment, a fake treatment, or no treatment
• Random assignment of participants to ensure the groups are equivalent

Depending on your study topic, there are various other methods of controlling variables .

Questionnaires can be self-administered or researcher-administered.

Self-administered questionnaires can be delivered online or in paper-and-pen formats, in person or by post. All questions are standardised so that all respondents receive the same questions with identical wording.

Researcher-administered questionnaires are interviews that take place by phone, in person, or online between researchers and respondents. You can gain deeper insights by clarifying questions for respondents or asking follow-up questions.

You can organise the questions logically, with a clear progression from simple to complex, or randomly between respondents. A logical flow helps respondents process the questionnaire easier and quicker, but it may lead to bias. Randomisation can minimise the bias from order effects.

Closed-ended, or restricted-choice, questions offer respondents a fixed set of choices to select from. These questions are easier to answer quickly.

Open-ended or long-form questions allow respondents to answer in their own words. Because there are no restrictions on their choices, respondents can answer in ways that researchers may not have otherwise considered.

Naturalistic observation is a qualitative research method where you record the behaviours of your research subjects in real-world settings. You avoid interfering or influencing anything in a naturalistic observation.

You can think of naturalistic observation as ‘people watching’ with a purpose.

Naturalistic observation is a valuable tool because of its flexibility, external validity , and suitability for topics that can’t be studied in a lab setting.

The downsides of naturalistic observation include its lack of scientific control , ethical considerations , and potential for bias from observers and subjects.

You can use several tactics to minimise observer bias .

• Use masking (blinding) to hide the purpose of your study from all observers.
• Triangulate your data with different data collection methods or sources.
• Use multiple observers and ensure inter-rater reliability.
• Train your observers to make sure data is consistently recorded between them.
• Standardise your observation procedures to make sure they are structured and clear.

The observer-expectancy effect occurs when researchers influence the results of their own study through interactions with participants.

Researchers’ own beliefs and expectations about the study results may unintentionally influence participants through demand characteristics .

Observer bias occurs when a researcher’s expectations, opinions, or prejudices influence what they perceive or record in a study. It usually affects studies when observers are aware of the research aims or hypotheses. This type of research bias is also called detection bias or ascertainment bias .

Data cleaning is necessary for valid and appropriate analyses. Dirty data contain inconsistencies or errors , but cleaning your data helps you minimise or resolve these.

Without data cleaning, you could end up with a Type I or II error in your conclusion. These types of erroneous conclusions can be practically significant with important consequences, because they lead to misplaced investments or missed opportunities.

Data cleaning involves spotting and resolving potential data inconsistencies or errors to improve your data quality. An error is any value (e.g., recorded weight) that doesn’t reflect the true value (e.g., actual weight) of something that’s being measured.

In this process, you review, analyse, detect, modify, or remove ‘dirty’ data to make your dataset ‘clean’. Data cleaning is also called data cleansing or data scrubbing.

Data cleaning takes place between data collection and data analyses. But you can use some methods even before collecting data.

For clean data, you should start by designing measures that collect valid data. Data validation at the time of data entry or collection helps you minimize the amount of data cleaning you’ll need to do.

After data collection, you can use data standardisation and data transformation to clean your data. You’ll also deal with any missing values, outliers, and duplicate values.

Clean data are valid, accurate, complete, consistent, unique, and uniform. Dirty data include inconsistencies and errors.

Dirty data can come from any part of the research process, including poor research design , inappropriate measurement materials, or flawed data entry.

Random assignment is used in experiments with a between-groups or independent measures design. In this research design, there’s usually a control group and one or more experimental groups. Random assignment helps ensure that the groups are comparable.

In general, you should always use random assignment in this type of experimental design when it is ethically possible and makes sense for your study topic.

Random selection, or random sampling , is a way of selecting members of a population for your study’s sample.

In contrast, random assignment is a way of sorting the sample into control and experimental groups.

Random sampling enhances the external validity or generalisability of your results, while random assignment improves the internal validity of your study.

To implement random assignment , assign a unique number to every member of your study’s sample .

Then, you can use a random number generator or a lottery method to randomly assign each number to a control or experimental group. You can also do so manually, by flipping a coin or rolling a die to randomly assign participants to groups.

Exploratory research is often used when the issue you’re studying is new or when the data collection process is challenging for some reason.

You can use exploratory research if you have a general idea or a specific question that you want to study but there is no preexisting knowledge or paradigm with which to study it.

Exploratory research is a methodology approach that explores research questions that have not previously been studied in depth. It is often used when the issue you’re studying is new, or the data collection process is challenging in some way.

Explanatory research is used to investigate how or why a phenomenon occurs. Therefore, this type of research is often one of the first stages in the research process , serving as a jumping-off point for future research.

Explanatory research is a research method used to investigate how or why something occurs when only a small amount of information is available pertaining to that topic. It can help you increase your understanding of a given topic.

Blinding means hiding who is assigned to the treatment group and who is assigned to the control group in an experiment .

Blinding is important to reduce bias (e.g., observer bias , demand characteristics ) and ensure a study’s internal validity .

If participants know whether they are in a control or treatment group , they may adjust their behaviour in ways that affect the outcome that researchers are trying to measure. If the people administering the treatment are aware of group assignment, they may treat participants differently and thus directly or indirectly influence the final results.

• In a single-blind study , only the participants are blinded.
• In a double-blind study , both participants and experimenters are blinded.
• In a triple-blind study , the assignment is hidden not only from participants and experimenters, but also from the researchers analysing the data.

Many academic fields use peer review , largely to determine whether a manuscript is suitable for publication. Peer review enhances the credibility of the published manuscript.

However, peer review is also common in non-academic settings. The United Nations, the European Union, and many individual nations use peer review to evaluate grant applications. It is also widely used in medical and health-related fields as a teaching or quality-of-care measure.

Peer assessment is often used in the classroom as a pedagogical tool. Both receiving feedback and providing it are thought to enhance the learning process, helping students think critically and collaboratively.

Peer review can stop obviously problematic, falsified, or otherwise untrustworthy research from being published. It also represents an excellent opportunity to get feedback from renowned experts in your field.

It acts as a first defence, helping you ensure your argument is clear and that there are no gaps, vague terms, or unanswered questions for readers who weren’t involved in the research process.

Peer-reviewed articles are considered a highly credible source due to this stringent process they go through before publication.

In general, the peer review process follows the following steps:

• First, the author submits the manuscript to the editor.
• Reject the manuscript and send it back to author, or
• Send it onward to the selected peer reviewer(s)
• Next, the peer review process occurs. The reviewer provides feedback, addressing any major or minor issues with the manuscript, and gives their advice regarding what edits should be made.
• Lastly, the edited manuscript is sent back to the author. They input the edits, and resubmit it to the editor for publication.

Peer review is a process of evaluating submissions to an academic journal. Utilising rigorous criteria, a panel of reviewers in the same subject area decide whether to accept each submission for publication.

For this reason, academic journals are often considered among the most credible sources you can use in a research project – provided that the journal itself is trustworthy and well regarded.

Anonymity means you don’t know who the participants are, while confidentiality means you know who they are but remove identifying information from your research report. Both are important ethical considerations .

You can only guarantee anonymity by not collecting any personally identifying information – for example, names, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, physical characteristics, photos, or videos.

You can keep data confidential by using aggregate information in your research report, so that you only refer to groups of participants rather than individuals.

Research misconduct means making up or falsifying data, manipulating data analyses, or misrepresenting results in research reports. It’s a form of academic fraud.

These actions are committed intentionally and can have serious consequences; research misconduct is not a simple mistake or a point of disagreement but a serious ethical failure.

Research ethics matter for scientific integrity, human rights and dignity, and collaboration between science and society. These principles make sure that participation in studies is voluntary, informed, and safe.

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. These principles include voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, potential for harm, and results communication.

Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from others .

These considerations protect the rights of research participants, enhance research validity , and maintain scientific integrity.

A systematic review is secondary research because it uses existing research. You don’t collect new data yourself.

The two main types of social desirability bias are:

• Self-deceptive enhancement (self-deception): The tendency to see oneself in a favorable light without realizing it.
• Impression managemen t (other-deception): The tendency to inflate one’s abilities or achievement in order to make a good impression on other people.

Demand characteristics are aspects of experiments that may give away the research objective to participants. Social desirability bias occurs when participants automatically try to respond in ways that make them seem likeable in a study, even if it means misrepresenting how they truly feel.

Participants may use demand characteristics to infer social norms or experimenter expectancies and act in socially desirable ways, so you should try to control for demand characteristics wherever possible.

Response bias refers to conditions or factors that take place during the process of responding to surveys, affecting the responses. One type of response bias is social desirability bias .

When your population is large in size, geographically dispersed, or difficult to contact, it’s necessary to use a sampling method .

This allows you to gather information from a smaller part of the population, i.e. the sample, and make accurate statements by using statistical analysis. A few sampling methods include simple random sampling , convenience sampling , and snowball sampling .

Stratified and cluster sampling may look similar, but bear in mind that groups created in cluster sampling are heterogeneous , so the individual characteristics in the cluster vary. In contrast, groups created in stratified sampling are homogeneous , as units share characteristics.

Relatedly, in cluster sampling you randomly select entire groups and include all units of each group in your sample. However, in stratified sampling, you select some units of all groups and include them in your sample. In this way, both methods can ensure that your sample is representative of the target population .

A sampling frame is a list of every member in the entire population . It is important that the sampling frame is as complete as possible, so that your sample accurately reflects your population.

Convenience sampling and quota sampling are both non-probability sampling methods. They both use non-random criteria like availability, geographical proximity, or expert knowledge to recruit study participants.

However, in convenience sampling, you continue to sample units or cases until you reach the required sample size.

In quota sampling, you first need to divide your population of interest into subgroups (strata) and estimate their proportions (quota) in the population. Then you can start your data collection , using convenience sampling to recruit participants, until the proportions in each subgroup coincide with the estimated proportions in the population.

Random sampling or probability sampling is based on random selection. This means that each unit has an equal chance (i.e., equal probability) of being included in the sample.

On the other hand, convenience sampling involves stopping people at random, which means that not everyone has an equal chance of being selected depending on the place, time, or day you are collecting your data.

Stratified sampling and quota sampling both involve dividing the population into subgroups and selecting units from each subgroup. The purpose in both cases is to select a representative sample and/or to allow comparisons between subgroups.

The main difference is that in stratified sampling, you draw a random sample from each subgroup ( probability sampling ). In quota sampling you select a predetermined number or proportion of units, in a non-random manner ( non-probability sampling ).

Snowball sampling is best used in the following cases:

• If there is no sampling frame available (e.g., people with a rare disease)
• If the population of interest is hard to access or locate (e.g., people experiencing homelessness)
• If the research focuses on a sensitive topic (e.g., extra-marital affairs)

Snowball sampling relies on the use of referrals. Here, the researcher recruits one or more initial participants, who then recruit the next ones. 

Participants share similar characteristics and/or know each other. Because of this, not every member of the population has an equal chance of being included in the sample, giving rise to sampling bias .

Snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling method , where there is not an equal chance for every member of the population to be included in the sample .

This means that you cannot use inferential statistics and make generalisations – often the goal of quantitative research . As such, a snowball sample is not representative of the target population, and is usually a better fit for qualitative research .

Snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling method . Unlike probability sampling (which involves some form of random selection ), the initial individuals selected to be studied are the ones who recruit new participants.

Because not every member of the target population has an equal chance of being recruited into the sample, selection in snowball sampling is non-random.

Reproducibility and replicability are related terms.

• Reproducing research entails reanalysing the existing data in the same manner.
• Replicating (or repeating ) the research entails reconducting the entire analysis, including the collection of new data . 
• A successful reproduction shows that the data analyses were conducted in a fair and honest manner.
• A successful replication shows that the reliability of the results is high.

The reproducibility and replicability of a study can be ensured by writing a transparent, detailed method section and using clear, unambiguous language.

Convergent validity and discriminant validity are both subtypes of construct validity . Together, they help you evaluate whether a test measures the concept it was designed to measure.

• Convergent validity indicates whether a test that is designed to measure a particular construct correlates with other tests that assess the same or similar construct.
• Discriminant validity indicates whether two tests that should not be highly related to each other are indeed not related

You need to assess both in order to demonstrate construct validity. Neither one alone is sufficient for establishing construct validity.

Construct validity has convergent and discriminant subtypes. They assist determine if a test measures the intended notion.

Content validity shows you how accurately a test or other measurement method taps  into the various aspects of the specific construct you are researching.

In other words, it helps you answer the question: “does the test measure all aspects of the construct I want to measure?” If it does, then the test has high content validity.

The higher the content validity, the more accurate the measurement of the construct.

If the test fails to include parts of the construct, or irrelevant parts are included, the validity of the instrument is threatened, which brings your results into question.

Construct validity refers to how well a test measures the concept (or construct) it was designed to measure. Assessing construct validity is especially important when you’re researching concepts that can’t be quantified and/or are intangible, like introversion. To ensure construct validity your test should be based on known indicators of introversion ( operationalisation ).

On the other hand, content validity assesses how well the test represents all aspects of the construct. If some aspects are missing or irrelevant parts are included, the test has low content validity.

Face validity and content validity are similar in that they both evaluate how suitable the content of a test is. The difference is that face validity is subjective, and assesses content at surface level.

When a test has strong face validity, anyone would agree that the test’s questions appear to measure what they are intended to measure.

For example, looking at a 4th grade math test consisting of problems in which students have to add and multiply, most people would agree that it has strong face validity (i.e., it looks like a math test).

On the other hand, content validity evaluates how well a test represents all the aspects of a topic. Assessing content validity is more systematic and relies on expert evaluation. of each question, analysing whether each one covers the aspects that the test was designed to cover.

A 4th grade math test would have high content validity if it covered all the skills taught in that grade. Experts(in this case, math teachers), would have to evaluate the content validity by comparing the test to the learning objectives.

• Discriminant validity indicates whether two tests that should not be highly related to each other are indeed not related. This type of validity is also called divergent validity .

Criterion validity and construct validity are both types of measurement validity . In other words, they both show you how accurately a method measures something.

While construct validity is the degree to which a test or other measurement method measures what it claims to measure, criterion validity is the degree to which a test can predictively (in the future) or concurrently (in the present) measure something.

Construct validity is often considered the overarching type of measurement validity . You need to have face validity , content validity , and criterion validity in order to achieve construct validity.

Attrition refers to participants leaving a study. It always happens to some extent – for example, in randomised control trials for medical research.

Differential attrition occurs when attrition or dropout rates differ systematically between the intervention and the control group . As a result, the characteristics of the participants who drop out differ from the characteristics of those who stay in the study. Because of this, study results may be biased .

Criterion validity evaluates how well a test measures the outcome it was designed to measure. An outcome can be, for example, the onset of a disease.

Criterion validity consists of two subtypes depending on the time at which the two measures (the criterion and your test) are obtained:

• Concurrent validity is a validation strategy where the the scores of a test and the criterion are obtained at the same time
• Predictive validity is a validation strategy where the criterion variables are measured after the scores of the test

Validity tells you how accurately a method measures what it was designed to measure. There are 4 main types of validity :

• Construct validity : Does the test measure the construct it was designed to measure?
• Face validity : Does the test appear to be suitable for its objectives ?
• Content validity : Does the test cover all relevant parts of the construct it aims to measure.
• Criterion validity : Do the results accurately measure the concrete outcome they are designed to measure?

Convergent validity shows how much a measure of one construct aligns with other measures of the same or related constructs .

On the other hand, concurrent validity is about how a measure matches up to some known criterion or gold standard, which can be another measure.

Although both types of validity are established by calculating the association or correlation between a test score and another variable , they represent distinct validation methods.

The purpose of theory-testing mode is to find evidence in order to disprove, refine, or support a theory. As such, generalisability is not the aim of theory-testing mode.

Due to this, the priority of researchers in theory-testing mode is to eliminate alternative causes for relationships between variables . In other words, they prioritise internal validity over external validity , including ecological validity .

Inclusion and exclusion criteria are typically presented and discussed in the methodology section of your thesis or dissertation .

Inclusion and exclusion criteria are predominantly used in non-probability sampling . In purposive sampling and snowball sampling , restrictions apply as to who can be included in the sample .

Scope of research is determined at the beginning of your research process , prior to the data collection stage. Sometimes called “scope of study,” your scope delineates what will and will not be covered in your project. It helps you focus your work and your time, ensuring that you’ll be able to achieve your goals and outcomes.

Defining a scope can be very useful in any research project, from a research proposal to a thesis or dissertation . A scope is needed for all types of research: quantitative , qualitative , and mixed methods .

To define your scope of research, consider the following:

• Budget constraints or any specifics of grant funding
• Your proposed timeline and duration
• Specifics about your population of study, your proposed sample size , and the research methodology you’ll pursue
• Any inclusion and exclusion criteria
• Any anticipated control , extraneous , or confounding variables that could bias your research if not accounted for properly.

To make quantitative observations , you need to use instruments that are capable of measuring the quantity you want to observe. For example, you might use a ruler to measure the length of an object or a thermometer to measure its temperature.

Quantitative observations involve measuring or counting something and expressing the result in numerical form, while qualitative observations involve describing something in non-numerical terms, such as its appearance, texture, or color.

The Scribbr Reference Generator is developed using the open-source Citation Style Language (CSL) project and Frank Bennett’s citeproc-js . It’s the same technology used by dozens of other popular citation tools, including Mendeley and Zotero.

You can find all the citation styles and locales used in the Scribbr Reference Generator in our publicly accessible repository on Github .

To paraphrase effectively, don’t just take the original sentence and swap out some of the words for synonyms. Instead, try:

• Reformulating the sentence (e.g., change active to passive , or start from a different point)
• Combining information from multiple sentences into one
• Leaving out information from the original that isn’t relevant to your point
• Using synonyms where they don’t distort the meaning

The main point is to ensure you don’t just copy the structure of the original text, but instead reformulate the idea in your own words.

Plagiarism means using someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own. Paraphrasing means putting someone else’s ideas into your own words.

So when does paraphrasing count as plagiarism?

• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if you don’t properly credit the original author.
• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if your text is too close to the original wording (even if you cite the source). If you directly copy a sentence or phrase, you should quote it instead.
• Paraphrasing  is not plagiarism if you put the author’s ideas completely into your own words and properly reference the source .

To present information from other sources in academic writing , it’s best to paraphrase in most cases. This shows that you’ve understood the ideas you’re discussing and incorporates them into your text smoothly.

It’s appropriate to quote when:

• Changing the phrasing would distort the meaning of the original text
• You want to discuss the author’s language choices (e.g., in literary analysis )
• You’re presenting a precise definition
• You’re looking in depth at a specific claim

A quote is an exact copy of someone else’s words, usually enclosed in quotation marks and credited to the original author or speaker.

Every time you quote a source , you must include a correctly formatted in-text citation . This looks slightly different depending on the citation style .

For example, a direct quote in APA is cited like this: ‘This is a quote’ (Streefkerk, 2020, p. 5).

Every in-text citation should also correspond to a full reference at the end of your paper.

In scientific subjects, the information itself is more important than how it was expressed, so quoting should generally be kept to a minimum. In the arts and humanities, however, well-chosen quotes are often essential to a good paper.

In social sciences, it varies. If your research is mainly quantitative , you won’t include many quotes, but if it’s more qualitative , you may need to quote from the data you collected .

As a general guideline, quotes should take up no more than 5–10% of your paper. If in doubt, check with your instructor or supervisor how much quoting is appropriate in your field.

If you’re quoting from a text that paraphrases or summarises other sources and cites them in parentheses , APA  recommends retaining the citations as part of the quote:

• Smith states that ‘the literature on this topic (Jones, 2015; Sill, 2019; Paulson, 2020) shows no clear consensus’ (Smith, 2019, p. 4).

Footnote or endnote numbers that appear within quoted text should be omitted.

If you want to cite an indirect source (one you’ve only seen quoted in another source), either locate the original source or use the phrase ‘as cited in’ in your citation.

A block quote is a long quote formatted as a separate ‘block’ of text. Instead of using quotation marks , you place the quote on a new line, and indent the entire quote to mark it apart from your own words.

APA uses block quotes for quotes that are 40 words or longer.

A credible source should pass the CRAAP test  and follow these guidelines:

• The information should be up to date and current.
• The author and publication should be a trusted authority on the subject you are researching.
• The sources the author cited should be easy to find, clear, and unbiased.
• For a web source, the URL and layout should signify that it is trustworthy.

Common examples of primary sources include interview transcripts , photographs, novels, paintings, films, historical documents, and official statistics.

Anything you directly analyze or use as first-hand evidence can be a primary source, including qualitative or quantitative data that you collected yourself.

Common examples of secondary sources include academic books, journal articles , reviews, essays , and textbooks.

Anything that summarizes, evaluates or interprets primary sources can be a secondary source. If a source gives you an overview of background information or presents another researcher’s ideas on your topic, it is probably a secondary source.

To determine if a source is primary or secondary, ask yourself:

• Was the source created by someone directly involved in the events you’re studying (primary), or by another researcher (secondary)?
• Does the source provide original information (primary), or does it summarize information from other sources (secondary)?
• Are you directly analyzing the source itself (primary), or only using it for background information (secondary)?

Some types of sources are nearly always primary: works of art and literature, raw statistical data, official documents and records, and personal communications (e.g. letters, interviews ). If you use one of these in your research, it is probably a primary source.

Primary sources are often considered the most credible in terms of providing evidence for your argument, as they give you direct evidence of what you are researching. However, it’s up to you to ensure the information they provide is reliable and accurate.

Always make sure to properly cite your sources to avoid plagiarism .

A fictional movie is usually a primary source. A documentary can be either primary or secondary depending on the context.

If you are directly analysing some aspect of the movie itself – for example, the cinematography, narrative techniques, or social context – the movie is a primary source.

If you use the movie for background information or analysis about your topic – for example, to learn about a historical event or a scientific discovery – the movie is a secondary source.

Whether it’s primary or secondary, always properly cite the movie in the citation style you are using. Learn how to create an MLA movie citation or an APA movie citation .

Articles in newspapers and magazines can be primary or secondary depending on the focus of your research.

In historical studies, old articles are used as primary sources that give direct evidence about the time period. In social and communication studies, articles are used as primary sources to analyse language and social relations (for example, by conducting content analysis or discourse analysis ).

If you are not analysing the article itself, but only using it for background information or facts about your topic, then the article is a secondary source.

In academic writing , there are three main situations where quoting is the best choice:

• To analyse the author’s language (e.g., in a literary analysis essay )
• To give evidence from primary sources
• To accurately present a precise definition or argument

Don’t overuse quotes; your own voice should be dominant. If you just want to provide information from a source, it’s usually better to paraphrase or summarise .

Your list of tables and figures should go directly after your table of contents in your thesis or dissertation.

Lists of figures and tables are often not required, and they aren’t particularly common. They specifically aren’t required for APA Style, though you should be careful to follow their other guidelines for figures and tables .

If you have many figures and tables in your thesis or dissertation, include one may help you stay organised. Your educational institution may require them, so be sure to check their guidelines.

Copyright information can usually be found wherever the table or figure was published. For example, for a diagram in a journal article , look on the journal’s website or the database where you found the article. Images found on sites like Flickr are listed with clear copyright information.

If you find that permission is required to reproduce the material, be sure to contact the author or publisher and ask for it.

A list of figures and tables compiles all of the figures and tables that you used in your thesis or dissertation and displays them with the page number where they can be found.

APA doesn’t require you to include a list of tables or a list of figures . However, it is advisable to do so if your text is long enough to feature a table of contents and it includes a lot of tables and/or figures .

A list of tables and list of figures appear (in that order) after your table of contents, and are presented in a similar way.

A glossary is a collection of words pertaining to a specific topic. In your thesis or dissertation, it’s a list of all terms you used that may not immediately be obvious to your reader. Your glossary only needs to include terms that your reader may not be familiar with, and is intended to enhance their understanding of your work.

Definitional terms often fall into the category of common knowledge , meaning that they don’t necessarily have to be cited. This guidance can apply to your thesis or dissertation glossary as well.

However, if you’d prefer to cite your sources , you can follow guidance for citing dictionary entries in MLA or APA style for your glossary.

A glossary is a collection of words pertaining to a specific topic. In your thesis or dissertation, it’s a list of all terms you used that may not immediately be obvious to your reader. In contrast, an index is a list of the contents of your work organised by page number.

Glossaries are not mandatory, but if you use a lot of technical or field-specific terms, it may improve readability to add one to your thesis or dissertation. Your educational institution may also require them, so be sure to check their specific guidelines.

A glossary is a collection of words pertaining to a specific topic. In your thesis or dissertation, it’s a list of all terms you used that may not immediately be obvious to your reader. In contrast, dictionaries are more general collections of words.

The title page of your thesis or dissertation should include your name, department, institution, degree program, and submission date.

The title page of your thesis or dissertation goes first, before all other content or lists that you may choose to include.

Usually, no title page is needed in an MLA paper . A header is generally included at the top of the first page instead. The exceptions are when:

• Your instructor requires one, or
• Your paper is a group project

In those cases, you should use a title page instead of a header, listing the same information but on a separate page.

When you mention different chapters within your text, it’s considered best to use Roman numerals for most citation styles. However, the most important thing here is to remain consistent whenever using numbers in your dissertation .

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical first steps in your writing process. It helps you to lay out and organise your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding what kind of research you’d like to undertake.

Generally, an outline contains information on the different sections included in your thesis or dissertation, such as:

• Your anticipated title
• Your abstract
• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review, research methods, avenues for future research, etc.)

While a theoretical framework describes the theoretical underpinnings of your work based on existing research, a conceptual framework allows you to draw your own conclusions, mapping out the variables you may use in your study and the interplay between them.

A literature review and a theoretical framework are not the same thing and cannot be used interchangeably. While a theoretical framework describes the theoretical underpinnings of your work, a literature review critically evaluates existing research relating to your topic. You’ll likely need both in your dissertation .

A theoretical framework can sometimes be integrated into a  literature review chapter , but it can also be included as its own chapter or section in your dissertation . As a rule of thumb, if your research involves dealing with a lot of complex theories, it’s a good idea to include a separate theoretical framework chapter.

An abstract is a concise summary of an academic text (such as a journal article or dissertation ). It serves two main purposes:

• To help potential readers determine the relevance of your paper for their own research.
• To communicate your key findings to those who don’t have time to read the whole paper.

Abstracts are often indexed along with keywords on academic databases, so they make your work more easily findable. Since the abstract is the first thing any reader sees, it’s important that it clearly and accurately summarises the contents of your paper.

The abstract is the very last thing you write. You should only write it after your research is complete, so that you can accurately summarize the entirety of your thesis or paper.

Avoid citing sources in your abstract . There are two reasons for this:

• The abstract should focus on your original research, not on the work of others.
• The abstract should be self-contained and fully understandable without reference to other sources.

There are some circumstances where you might need to mention other sources in an abstract: for example, if your research responds directly to another study or focuses on the work of a single theorist. In general, though, don’t include citations unless absolutely necessary.

The abstract appears on its own page, after the title page and acknowledgements but before the table of contents .

Results are usually written in the past tense , because they are describing the outcome of completed actions.

The results chapter or section simply and objectively reports what you found, without speculating on why you found these results. The discussion interprets the meaning of the results, puts them in context, and explains why they matter.

In qualitative research , results and discussion are sometimes combined. But in quantitative research , it’s considered important to separate the objective results from your interpretation of them.

Formulating a main research question can be a difficult task. Overall, your question should contribute to solving the problem that you have defined in your problem statement .

However, it should also fulfill criteria in three main areas:

• Researchability
• Feasibility and specificity
• Relevance and originality

The best way to remember the difference between a research plan and a research proposal is that they have fundamentally different audiences. A research plan helps you, the researcher, organize your thoughts. On the other hand, a dissertation proposal or research proposal aims to convince others (e.g., a supervisor, a funding body, or a dissertation committee) that your research topic is relevant and worthy of being conducted.

A noun is a word that represents a person, thing, concept, or place (e.g., ‘John’, ‘house’, ‘affinity’, ‘river’). Most sentences contain at least one noun or pronoun .

Nouns are often, but not always, preceded by an article (‘the’, ‘a’, or ‘an’) and/or another determiner such as an adjective.

There are many ways to categorize nouns into various types, and the same noun can fall into multiple categories or even change types depending on context.

Some of the main types of nouns are:

• Common nouns and proper nouns
• Countable and uncountable nouns
• Concrete and abstract nouns
• Collective nouns
• Possessive nouns
• Attributive nouns
• Appositive nouns
• Generic nouns

Pronouns are words like ‘I’, ‘she’, and ‘they’ that are used in a similar way to nouns . They stand in for a noun that has already been mentioned or refer to yourself and other people.

Pronouns can function just like nouns as the head of a noun phrase and as the subject or object of a verb. However, pronouns change their forms (e.g., from ‘I’ to ‘me’) depending on the grammatical context they’re used in, whereas nouns usually don’t.

Common nouns are words for types of things, people, and places, such as ‘dog’, ‘professor’, and ‘city’. They are not capitalised and are typically used in combination with articles and other determiners.

Proper nouns are words for specific things, people, and places, such as ‘Max’, ‘Dr Prakash’, and ‘London’. They are always capitalised and usually aren’t combined with articles and other determiners.

A proper adjective is an adjective that was derived from a proper noun and is therefore capitalised .

Proper adjectives include words for nationalities, languages, and ethnicities (e.g., ‘Japanese’, ‘Inuit’, ‘French’) and words derived from people’s names (e.g., ‘Bayesian’, ‘Orwellian’).

The names of seasons (e.g., ‘spring’) are treated as common nouns in English and therefore not capitalised . People often assume they are proper nouns, but this is an error.

The names of days and months, however, are capitalised since they’re treated as proper nouns in English (e.g., ‘Wednesday’, ‘January’).

No, as a general rule, academic concepts, disciplines, theories, models, etc. are treated as common nouns , not proper nouns , and therefore not capitalised . For example, ‘five-factor model of personality’ or ‘analytic philosophy’.

However, proper nouns that appear within the name of an academic concept (such as the name of the inventor) are capitalised as usual. For example, ‘Darwin’s theory of evolution’ or ‘ Student’s t table ‘.

Collective nouns are most commonly treated as singular (e.g., ‘the herd is grazing’), but usage differs between US and UK English :

• In US English, it’s standard to treat all collective nouns as singular, even when they are plural in appearance (e.g., ‘The Rolling Stones is …’). Using the plural form is usually seen as incorrect.
• In UK English, collective nouns can be treated as singular or plural depending on context. It’s quite common to use the plural form, especially when the noun looks plural (e.g., ‘The Rolling Stones are …’).

The plural of “crisis” is “crises”. It’s a loanword from Latin and retains its original Latin plural noun form (similar to “analyses” and “bases”). It’s wrong to write “crisises”.

For example, you might write “Several crises destabilized the regime.”

Normally, the plural of “fish” is the same as the singular: “fish”. It’s one of a group of irregular plural nouns in English that are identical to the corresponding singular nouns (e.g., “moose”, “sheep”). For example, you might write “The fish scatter as the shark approaches.”

If you’re referring to several species of fish, though, the regular plural “fishes” is often used instead. For example, “The aquarium contains many different fishes , including trout and carp.”

The correct plural of “octopus” is “octopuses”.

People often write “octopi” instead because they assume that the plural noun is formed in the same way as Latin loanwords such as “fungus/fungi”. But “octopus” actually comes from Greek, where its original plural is “octopodes”. In English, it instead has the regular plural form “octopuses”.

For example, you might write “There are four octopuses in the aquarium.”

The plural of “moose” is the same as the singular: “moose”. It’s one of a group of plural nouns in English that are identical to the corresponding singular nouns. So it’s wrong to write “mooses”.

For example, you might write “There are several moose in the forest.”

Bias in research affects the validity and reliability of your findings, leading to false conclusions and a misinterpretation of the truth. This can have serious implications in areas like medical research where, for example, a new form of treatment may be evaluated.

Observer bias occurs when the researcher’s assumptions, views, or preconceptions influence what they see and record in a study, while actor–observer bias refers to situations where respondents attribute internal factors (e.g., bad character) to justify other’s behaviour and external factors (difficult circumstances) to justify the same behaviour in themselves.

Response bias is a general term used to describe a number of different conditions or factors that cue respondents to provide inaccurate or false answers during surveys or interviews . These factors range from the interviewer’s perceived social position or appearance to the the phrasing of questions in surveys.

Nonresponse bias occurs when the people who complete a survey are different from those who did not, in ways that are relevant to the research topic. Nonresponse can happen either because people are not willing or not able to participate.

In research, demand characteristics are cues that might indicate the aim of a study to participants. These cues can lead to participants changing their behaviors or responses based on what they think the research is about.

Demand characteristics are common problems in psychology experiments and other social science studies because they can bias your research findings.

Demand characteristics are a type of extraneous variable that can affect the outcomes of the study. They can invalidate studies by providing an alternative explanation for the results.

These cues may nudge participants to consciously or unconsciously change their responses, and they pose a threat to both internal and external validity . You can’t be sure that your independent variable manipulation worked, or that your findings can be applied to other people or settings.

You can control demand characteristics by taking a few precautions in your research design and materials.

Use these measures:

• Deception: Hide the purpose of the study from participants
• Between-groups design : Give each participant only one independent variable treatment
• Double-blind design : Conceal the assignment of groups from participants and yourself
• Implicit measures: Use indirect or hidden measurements for your variables

Some attrition is normal and to be expected in research. However, the type of attrition is important because systematic research bias can distort your findings. Attrition bias can lead to inaccurate results because it affects internal and/or external validity .

To avoid attrition bias , applying some of these measures can help you reduce participant dropout (attrition) by making it easy and appealing for participants to stay.

• Provide compensation (e.g., cash or gift cards) for attending every session
• Minimise the number of follow-ups as much as possible
• Make all follow-ups brief, flexible, and convenient for participants
• Send participants routine reminders to schedule follow-ups
• Recruit more participants than you need for your sample (oversample)
• Maintain detailed contact information so you can get in touch with participants even if they move

If you have a small amount of attrition bias , you can use a few statistical methods to try to make up for this research bias .

Multiple imputation involves using simulations to replace the missing data with likely values. Alternatively, you can use sample weighting to make up for the uneven balance of participants in your sample.

Placebos are used in medical research for new medication or therapies, called clinical trials. In these trials some people are given a placebo, while others are given the new medication being tested.

The purpose is to determine how effective the new medication is: if it benefits people beyond a predefined threshold as compared to the placebo, it’s considered effective.

Although there is no definite answer to what causes the placebo effect , researchers propose a number of explanations such as the power of suggestion, doctor-patient interaction, classical conditioning, etc.

Belief bias and confirmation bias are both types of cognitive bias that impact our judgment and decision-making.

Confirmation bias relates to how we perceive and judge evidence. We tend to seek out and prefer information that supports our preexisting beliefs, ignoring any information that contradicts those beliefs.

Belief bias describes the tendency to judge an argument based on how plausible the conclusion seems to us, rather than how much evidence is provided to support it during the course of the argument.

Positivity bias is phenomenon that occurs when a person judges individual members of a group positively, even when they have negative impressions or judgments of the group as a whole. Positivity bias is closely related to optimism bias , or the e xpectation that things will work out well, even if rationality suggests that problems are inevitable in life.

Perception bias is a problem because it prevents us from seeing situations or people objectively. Rather, our expectations, beliefs, or emotions interfere with how we interpret reality. This, in turn, can cause us to misjudge ourselves or others. For example, our prejudices can interfere with whether we perceive people’s faces as friendly or unfriendly.

There are many ways to categorize adjectives into various types. An adjective can fall into one or more of these categories depending on how it is used.

Some of the main types of adjectives are:

• Attributive adjectives
• Predicative adjectives
• Comparative adjectives
• Superlative adjectives
• Coordinate adjectives
• Appositive adjectives
• Compound adjectives
• Participial adjectives
• Proper adjectives
• Denominal adjectives
• Nominal adjectives

Cardinal numbers (e.g., one, two, three) can be placed before a noun to indicate quantity (e.g., one apple). While these are sometimes referred to as ‘numeral adjectives ‘, they are more accurately categorised as determiners or quantifiers.

Proper adjectives are adjectives formed from a proper noun (i.e., the name of a specific person, place, or thing) that are used to indicate origin. Like proper nouns, proper adjectives are always capitalised (e.g., Newtonian, Marxian, African).

The cost of proofreading depends on the type and length of text, the turnaround time, and the level of services required. Most proofreading companies charge per word or page, while freelancers sometimes charge an hourly rate.

For proofreading alone, which involves only basic corrections of typos and formatting mistakes, you might pay as little as £0.01 per word, but in many cases, your text will also require some level of editing , which costs slightly more.

It’s often possible to purchase combined proofreading and editing services and calculate the price in advance based on your requirements.

Then and than are two commonly confused words . In the context of ‘better than’, you use ‘than’ with an ‘a’.

• Julie is better than Jesse.
• I’d rather spend my time with you than with him.
• I understand Eoghan’s point of view better than Claudia’s.

Use to and used to are commonly confused words . In the case of ‘used to do’, the latter (with ‘d’) is correct, since you’re describing an action or state in the past.

• I used to do laundry once a week.
• They used to do each other’s hair.
• We used to do the dishes every day .

There are numerous synonyms and near synonyms for the various meanings of “ favour ”:

There are numerous synonyms and near synonyms for the two meanings of “ favoured ”:

No one (two words) is an indefinite pronoun meaning ‘nobody’. People sometimes mistakenly write ‘noone’, but this is incorrect and should be avoided. ‘No-one’, with a hyphen, is also acceptable in UK English .

Nobody and no one are both indefinite pronouns meaning ‘no person’. They can be used interchangeably (e.g., ‘nobody is home’ means the same as ‘no one is home’).

Some synonyms and near synonyms of  every time include:

• Without exception

‘Everytime’ is sometimes used to mean ‘each time’ or ‘whenever’. However, this is incorrect and should be avoided. The correct phrase is every time   (two words).

Yes, the conjunction because is a compound word , but one with a long history. It originates in Middle English from the preposition “bi” (“by”) and the noun “cause”. Over time, the open compound “bi cause” became the closed compound “because”, which we use today.

Though it’s spelled this way now, the verb “be” is not one of the words that makes up “because”.

Yes, today is a compound word , but a very old one. It wasn’t originally formed from the preposition “to” and the noun “day”; rather, it originates from their Old English equivalents, “tō” and “dæġe”.

In the past, it was sometimes written as a hyphenated compound: “to-day”. But the hyphen is no longer included; it’s always “today” now (“to day” is also wrong).

IEEE citation format is defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and used in their publications.

It’s also a widely used citation style for students in technical fields like electrical and electronic engineering, computer science, telecommunications, and computer engineering.

An IEEE in-text citation consists of a number in brackets at the relevant point in the text, which points the reader to the right entry in the numbered reference list at the end of the paper. For example, ‘Smith [1] states that …’

A location marker such as a page number is also included within the brackets when needed: ‘Smith [1, p. 13] argues …’

The IEEE reference page consists of a list of references numbered in the order they were cited in the text. The title ‘References’ appears in bold at the top, either left-aligned or centered.

The numbers appear in square brackets on the left-hand side of the page. The reference entries are indented consistently to separate them from the numbers. Entries are single-spaced, with a normal paragraph break between them.

If you cite the same source more than once in your writing, use the same number for all of the IEEE in-text citations for that source, and only include it on the IEEE reference page once. The source is numbered based on the first time you cite it.

For example, the fourth source you cite in your paper is numbered [4]. If you cite it again later, you still cite it as [4]. You can cite different parts of the source each time by adding page numbers [4, p. 15].

A verb is a word that indicates a physical action (e.g., ‘drive’), a mental action (e.g., ‘think’) or a state of being (e.g., ‘exist’). Every sentence contains a verb.

Verbs are almost always used along with a noun or pronoun to describe what the noun or pronoun is doing.

There are many ways to categorize verbs into various types. A verb can fall into one or more of these categories depending on how it is used.

Some of the main types of verbs are:

• Regular verbs
• Irregular verbs
• Transitive verbs
• Intransitive verbs
• Dynamic verbs
• Stative verbs
• Linking verbs
• Auxiliary verbs
• Modal verbs
• Phrasal verbs

Regular verbs are verbs whose simple past and past participle are formed by adding the suffix ‘-ed’ (e.g., ‘walked’).

Irregular verbs are verbs that form their simple past and past participles in some way other than by adding the suffix ‘-ed’ (e.g., ‘sat’).

The indefinite articles a and an are used to refer to a general or unspecified version of a noun (e.g., a house). Which indefinite article you use depends on the pronunciation of the word that follows it.

• A is used for words that begin with a consonant sound (e.g., a bear).
• An is used for words that begin with a vowel sound (e.g., an eagle).

Indefinite articles can only be used with singular countable nouns . Like definite articles, they are a type of determiner .

Editing and proofreading are different steps in the process of revising a text.

Editing comes first, and can involve major changes to content, structure and language. The first stages of editing are often done by authors themselves, while a professional editor makes the final improvements to grammar and style (for example, by improving sentence structure and word choice ).

Proofreading is the final stage of checking a text before it is published or shared. It focuses on correcting minor errors and inconsistencies (for example, in punctuation and capitalization ). Proofreaders often also check for formatting issues, especially in print publishing.

Whether you’re publishing a blog, submitting a research paper , or even just writing an important email, there are a few techniques you can use to make sure it’s error-free:

• Take a break : Set your work aside for at least a few hours so that you can look at it with fresh eyes.
• Proofread a printout : Staring at a screen for too long can cause fatigue – sit down with a pen and paper to check the final version.
• Use digital shortcuts : Take note of any recurring mistakes (for example, misspelling a particular word, switching between US and UK English , or inconsistently capitalizing a term), and use Find and Replace to fix it throughout the document.

If you want to be confident that an important text is error-free, it might be worth choosing a professional proofreading service instead.

There are many different routes to becoming a professional proofreader or editor. The necessary qualifications depend on the field – to be an academic or scientific proofreader, for example, you will need at least a university degree in a relevant subject.

For most proofreading jobs, experience and demonstrated skills are more important than specific qualifications. Often your skills will be tested as part of the application process.

To learn practical proofreading skills, you can choose to take a course with a professional organisation such as the Society for Editors and Proofreaders . Alternatively, you can apply to companies that offer specialised on-the-job training programmes, such as the Scribbr Academy .

Though they’re pronounced the same, there’s a big difference in meaning between its and it’s .

• ‘The cat ate its food’.
• ‘It’s almost Christmas’.

Its and it’s are often confused, but its (without apostrophe) is the possessive form of ‘it’ (e.g., its tail, its argument, its wing). You use ‘its’ instead of ‘his’ and ‘her’ for neuter, inanimate nouns.

Then and than are two commonly confused words with different meanings and grammatical roles.

• Then (pronounced with a short ‘e’ sound) refers to time. It’s often an adverb , but it can also be used as a noun meaning ‘that time’ and as an adjective referring to a previous status.
• Than (pronounced with a short ‘a’ sound) is used for comparisons. Grammatically, it usually functions as a conjunction , but sometimes it’s a preposition .

Use to and used to are commonly confused words . In the case of ‘used to be’, the latter (with ‘d’) is correct, since you’re describing an action or state in the past.

• I used to be the new coworker.
• There used to be 4 cookies left.
• We used to walk to school every day .

A grammar checker is a tool designed to automatically check your text for spelling errors, grammatical issues, punctuation mistakes , and problems with sentence structure . You can check out our analysis of the best free grammar checkers to learn more.

A paraphrasing tool edits your text more actively, changing things whether they were grammatically incorrect or not. It can paraphrase your sentences to make them more concise and readable or for other purposes. You can check out our analysis of the best free paraphrasing tools to learn more.

Some tools available online combine both functions. Others, such as QuillBot , have separate grammar checker and paraphrasing tools. Be aware of what exactly the tool you’re using does to avoid introducing unwanted changes.

Good grammar is the key to expressing yourself clearly and fluently, especially in professional communication and academic writing . Word processors, browsers, and email programs typically have built-in grammar checkers, but they’re quite limited in the kinds of problems they can fix.

If you want to go beyond detecting basic spelling errors, there are many online grammar checkers with more advanced functionality. They can often detect issues with punctuation , word choice, and sentence structure that more basic tools would miss.

Not all of these tools are reliable, though. You can check out our research into the best free grammar checkers to explore the options.

Our research indicates that the best free grammar checker available online is the QuillBot grammar checker .

We tested 10 of the most popular checkers with the same sample text (containing 20 grammatical errors) and found that QuillBot easily outperformed the competition, scoring 18 out of 20, a drastic improvement over the second-place score of 13 out of 20.

It even appeared to outperform the premium versions of other grammar checkers, despite being entirely free.

A teacher’s aide is a person who assists in teaching classes but is not a qualified teacher. Aide is a noun meaning ‘assistant’, so it will always refer to a person.

‘Teacher’s aid’ is incorrect.

A visual aid is an instructional device (e.g., a photo, a chart) that appeals to vision to help you understand written or spoken information. Aid is often placed after an attributive noun or adjective (like ‘visual’) that describes the type of help provided.

‘Visual aide’ is incorrect.

A job aid is an instructional tool (e.g., a checklist, a cheat sheet) that helps you work efficiently. Aid is a noun meaning ‘assistance’. It’s often placed after an adjective or attributive noun (like ‘job’) that describes the specific type of help provided.

‘Job aide’ is incorrect.

There are numerous synonyms for the various meanings of truly :

Yours truly is a phrase used at the end of a formal letter or email. It can also be used (typically in a humorous way) as a pronoun to refer to oneself (e.g., ‘The dinner was cooked by yours truly ‘). The latter usage should be avoided in formal writing.

It’s formed by combining the second-person possessive pronoun ‘yours’ with the adverb ‘ truly ‘.

A pathetic fallacy can be a short phrase or a whole sentence and is often used in novels and poetry. Pathetic fallacies serve multiple purposes, such as:

• Conveying the emotional state of the characters or the narrator
• Creating an atmosphere or set the mood of a scene
• Foreshadowing events to come
• Giving texture and vividness to a piece of writing
• Communicating emotion to the reader in a subtle way, by describing the external world.
• Bringing inanimate objects to life so that they seem more relatable.

AMA citation format is a citation style designed by the American Medical Association. It’s frequently used in the field of medicine.

You may be told to use AMA style for your student papers. You will also have to follow this style if you’re submitting a paper to a journal published by the AMA.

An AMA in-text citation consists of the number of the relevant reference on your AMA reference page , written in superscript 1 at the point in the text where the source is used.

It may also include the page number or range of the relevant material in the source (e.g., the part you quoted 2(p46) ). Multiple sources can be cited at one point, presented as a range or list (with no spaces 3,5–9 ).

An AMA reference usually includes the author’s last name and initials, the title of the source, information about the publisher or the publication it’s contained in, and the publication date. The specific details included, and the formatting, depend on the source type.

References in AMA style are presented in numerical order (numbered by the order in which they were first cited in the text) on your reference page. A source that’s cited repeatedly in the text still only appears once on the reference page.

An AMA in-text citation just consists of the number of the relevant entry on your AMA reference page , written in superscript at the point in the text where the source is referred to.

You don’t need to mention the author of the source in your sentence, but you can do so if you want. It’s not an official part of the citation, but it can be useful as part of a signal phrase introducing the source.

On your AMA reference page , author names are written with the last name first, followed by the initial(s) of their first name and middle name if mentioned.

There’s a space between the last name and the initials, but no space or punctuation between the initials themselves. The names of multiple authors are separated by commas , and the whole list ends in a period, e.g., ‘Andreessen F, Smith PW, Gonzalez E’.

The names of up to six authors should be listed for each source on your AMA reference page , separated by commas . For a source with seven or more authors, you should list the first three followed by ‘ et al’ : ‘Isidore, Gilbert, Gunvor, et al’.

In the text, mentioning author names is optional (as they aren’t an official part of AMA in-text citations ). If you do mention them, though, you should use the first author’s name followed by ‘et al’ when there are three or more : ‘Isidore et al argue that …’

Note that according to AMA’s rather minimalistic punctuation guidelines, there’s no period after ‘et al’ unless it appears at the end of a sentence. This is different from most other styles, where there is normally a period.

Yes, you should normally include an access date in an AMA website citation (or when citing any source with a URL). This is because webpages can change their content over time, so it’s useful for the reader to know when you accessed the page.

When a publication or update date is provided on the page, you should include it in addition to the access date. The access date appears second in this case, e.g., ‘Published June 19, 2021. Accessed August 29, 2022.’

Don’t include an access date when citing a source with a DOI (such as in an AMA journal article citation ).

Some variables have fixed levels. For example, gender and ethnicity are always nominal level data because they cannot be ranked.

However, for other variables, you can choose the level of measurement . For example, income is a variable that can be recorded on an ordinal or a ratio scale:

• At an ordinal level , you could create 5 income groupings and code the incomes that fall within them from 1–5.
• At a ratio level , you would record exact numbers for income.

If you have a choice, the ratio level is always preferable because you can analyse data in more ways. The higher the level of measurement, the more precise your data is.

The level at which you measure a variable determines how you can analyse your data.

Depending on the level of measurement , you can perform different descriptive statistics to get an overall summary of your data and inferential statistics to see if your results support or refute your hypothesis .

Levels of measurement tell you how precisely variables are recorded. There are 4 levels of measurement, which can be ranked from low to high:

• Nominal : the data can only be categorised.
• Ordinal : the data can be categorised and ranked.
• Interval : the data can be categorised and ranked, and evenly spaced.
• Ratio : the data can be categorised, ranked, evenly spaced and has a natural zero.

Statistical analysis is the main method for analyzing quantitative research data . It uses probabilities and models to test predictions about a population from sample data.

The null hypothesis is often abbreviated as H 0 . When the null hypothesis is written using mathematical symbols, it always includes an equality symbol (usually =, but sometimes ≥ or ≤).

The alternative hypothesis is often abbreviated as H a or H 1 . When the alternative hypothesis is written using mathematical symbols, it always includes an inequality symbol (usually ≠, but sometimes < or >).

As the degrees of freedom increase, Student’s t distribution becomes less leptokurtic , meaning that the probability of extreme values decreases. The distribution becomes more and more similar to a standard normal distribution .

When there are only one or two degrees of freedom , the chi-square distribution is shaped like a backwards ‘J’. When there are three or more degrees of freedom, the distribution is shaped like a right-skewed hump. As the degrees of freedom increase, the hump becomes less right-skewed and the peak of the hump moves to the right. The distribution becomes more and more similar to a normal distribution .

‘Looking forward in hearing from you’ is an incorrect version of the phrase looking forward to hearing from you . The phrasal verb ‘looking forward to’ always needs the preposition ‘to’, not ‘in’.

• I am looking forward in hearing from you.
• I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Some synonyms and near synonyms for the expression looking forward to hearing from you include:

• Eagerly awaiting your response
• Hoping to hear from you soon
• It would be great to hear back from you
• Thanks in advance for your reply

People sometimes mistakenly write ‘looking forward to hear from you’, but this is incorrect. The correct phrase is looking forward to hearing from you .

The phrasal verb ‘look forward to’ is always followed by a direct object, the thing you’re looking forward to. As the direct object has to be a noun phrase , it should be the gerund ‘hearing’, not the verb ‘hear’.

• I’m looking forward to hear from you soon.
• I’m looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Traditionally, the sign-off Yours sincerely is used in an email message or letter when you are writing to someone you have interacted with before, not a complete stranger.

Yours faithfully is used instead when you are writing to someone you have had no previous correspondence with, especially if you greeted them as ‘ Dear Sir or Madam ’.

Just checking in   is a standard phrase used to start an email (or other message) that’s intended to ask someone for a response or follow-up action in a friendly, informal way. However, it’s a cliché opening that can come across as passive-aggressive, so we recommend avoiding it in favor of a more direct opening like “We previously discussed …”

In a more personal context, you might encounter “just checking in” as part of a longer phrase such as “I’m just checking in to see how you’re doing”. In this case, it’s not asking the other person to do anything but rather asking about their well-being (emotional or physical) in a friendly way.

“Earliest convenience” is part of the phrase at your earliest convenience , meaning “as soon as you can”. 

It’s typically used to end an email in a formal context by asking the recipient to do something when it’s convenient for them to do so.

ASAP is an abbreviation of the phrase “as soon as possible”. 

It’s typically used to indicate a sense of urgency in highly informal contexts (e.g., “Let me know ASAP if you need me to drive you to the airport”).

“ASAP” should be avoided in more formal correspondence. Instead, use an alternative like at your earliest convenience .

Some synonyms and near synonyms of the verb   compose   (meaning “to make up”) are:

People increasingly use “comprise” as a synonym of “compose.” However, this is normally still seen as a mistake, and we recommend avoiding it in your academic writing . “Comprise” traditionally means “to be made up of,” not “to make up.”

Some synonyms and near synonyms of the verb comprise are:

• Be composed of
• Be made up of

People increasingly use “comprise” interchangeably with “compose,” meaning that they consider words like “compose,” “constitute,” and “form” to be synonymous with “comprise.” However, this is still normally regarded as an error, and we advise against using these words interchangeably in academic writing .

A fallacy is a mistaken belief, particularly one based on unsound arguments or one that lacks the evidence to support it. Common types of fallacy that may compromise the quality of your research are:

• Correlation/causation fallacy: Claiming that two events that occur together have a cause-and-effect relationship even though this can’t be proven
• Ecological fallacy : Making inferences about the nature of individuals based on aggregate data for the group
• The sunk cost fallacy : Following through on a project or decision because we have already invested time, effort, or money into it, even if the current costs outweigh the benefits
• The base-rate fallacy : Ignoring base-rate or statistically significant information, such as sample size or the relative frequency of an event, in favor of  less relevant information e.g., pertaining to a single case, or a small number of cases
• The planning fallacy : Underestimating the time needed to complete a future task, even when we know that similar tasks in the past have taken longer than planned

The planning fallacy refers to people’s tendency to underestimate the resources needed to complete a future task, despite knowing that previous tasks have also taken longer than planned.

For example, people generally tend to underestimate the cost and time needed for construction projects. The planning fallacy occurs due to people’s tendency to overestimate the chances that positive events, such as a shortened timeline, will happen to them. This phenomenon is called optimism bias or positivity bias.

Although both red herring fallacy and straw man fallacy are logical fallacies or reasoning errors, they denote different attempts to “win” an argument. More specifically:

• A red herring fallacy refers to an attempt to change the subject and divert attention from the original issue. In other words, a seemingly solid but ultimately irrelevant argument is introduced into the discussion, either on purpose or by mistake.
• A straw man argument involves the deliberate distortion of another person’s argument. By oversimplifying or exaggerating it, the other party creates an easy-to-refute argument and then attacks it.

The red herring fallacy is a problem because it is flawed reasoning. It is a distraction device that causes people to become sidetracked from the main issue and draw wrong conclusions.

Although a red herring may have some kernel of truth, it is used as a distraction to keep our eyes on a different matter. As a result, it can cause us to accept and spread misleading information.

The sunk cost fallacy and escalation of commitment (or commitment bias ) are two closely related terms. However, there is a slight difference between them:

• Escalation of commitment (aka commitment bias ) is the tendency to be consistent with what we have already done or said we will do in the past, especially if we did so in public. In other words, it is an attempt to save face and appear consistent.
• Sunk cost fallacy is the tendency to stick with a decision or a plan even when it’s failing. Because we have already invested valuable time, money, or energy, quitting feels like these resources were wasted.

In other words, escalating commitment is a manifestation of the sunk cost fallacy: an irrational escalation of commitment frequently occurs when people refuse to accept that the resources they’ve already invested cannot be recovered. Instead, they insist on more spending to justify the initial investment (and the incurred losses).

When you are faced with a straw man argument , the best way to respond is to draw attention to the fallacy and ask your discussion partner to show how your original statement and their distorted version are the same. Since these are different, your partner will either have to admit that their argument is invalid or try to justify it by using more flawed reasoning, which you can then attack.

The straw man argument is a problem because it occurs when we fail to take an opposing point of view seriously. Instead, we intentionally misrepresent our opponent’s ideas and avoid genuinely engaging with them. Due to this, resorting to straw man fallacy lowers the standard of constructive debate.

A straw man argument is a distorted (and weaker) version of another person’s argument that can easily be refuted (e.g., when a teacher proposes that the class spend more time on math exercises, a parent complains that the teacher doesn’t care about reading and writing).

This is a straw man argument because it misrepresents the teacher’s position, which didn’t mention anything about cutting down on reading and writing. The straw man argument is also known as the straw man fallacy .

A slippery slope argument is not always a fallacy.

• When someone claims adopting a certain policy or taking a certain action will automatically lead to a series of other policies or actions also being taken, this is a slippery slope argument.
• If they don’t show a causal connection between the advocated policy and the consequent policies, then they commit a slippery slope fallacy .

There are a number of ways you can deal with slippery slope arguments especially when you suspect these are fallacious:

• Slippery slope arguments take advantage of the gray area between an initial action or decision and the possible next steps that might lead to the undesirable outcome. You can point out these missing steps and ask your partner to indicate what evidence exists to support the claimed relationship between two or more events.
• Ask yourself if each link in the chain of events or action is valid. Every proposition has to be true for the overall argument to work, so even if one link is irrational or not supported by evidence, then the argument collapses.
• Sometimes people commit a slippery slope fallacy unintentionally. In these instances, use an example that demonstrates the problem with slippery slope arguments in general (e.g., by using statements to reach a conclusion that is not necessarily relevant to the initial statement). By attacking the concept of slippery slope arguments you can show that they are often fallacious.

People sometimes confuse cognitive bias and logical fallacies because they both relate to flawed thinking. However, they are not the same:

• Cognitive bias is the tendency to make decisions or take action in an illogical way because of our values, memory, socialization, and other personal attributes. In other words, it refers to a fixed pattern of thinking rooted in the way our brain works.
• Logical fallacies relate to how we make claims and construct our arguments in the moment. They are statements that sound convincing at first but can be disproven through logical reasoning.

In other words, cognitive bias refers to an ongoing predisposition, while logical fallacy refers to mistakes of reasoning that occur in the moment.

An appeal to ignorance (ignorance here meaning lack of evidence) is a type of informal logical fallacy .

It asserts that something must be true because it hasn’t been proven false—or that something must be false because it has not yet been proven true.

For example, “unicorns exist because there is no evidence that they don’t.” The appeal to ignorance is also called the burden of proof fallacy .

An ad hominem (Latin for “to the person”) is a type of informal logical fallacy . Instead of arguing against a person’s position, an ad hominem argument attacks the person’s character or actions in an effort to discredit them.

This rhetorical strategy is fallacious because a person’s character, motive, education, or other personal trait is logically irrelevant to whether their argument is true or false.

Name-calling is common in ad hominem fallacy (e.g., “environmental activists are ineffective because they’re all lazy tree-huggers”).

Ad hominem is a persuasive technique where someone tries to undermine the opponent’s argument by personally attacking them.

In this way, one can redirect the discussion away from the main topic and to the opponent’s personality without engaging with their viewpoint. When the opponent’s personality is irrelevant to the discussion, we call it an ad hominem fallacy .

Ad hominem tu quoque (‘you too”) is an attempt to rebut a claim by attacking its proponent on the grounds that they uphold a double standard or that they don’t practice what they preach. For example, someone is telling you that you should drive slowly otherwise you’ll get a speeding ticket one of these days, and you reply “but you used to get them all the time!”

Argumentum ad hominem means “argument to the person” in Latin and it is commonly referred to as ad hominem argument or personal attack. Ad hominem arguments are used in debates to refute an argument by attacking the character of the person making it, instead of the logic or premise of the argument itself.

The opposite of the hasty generalization fallacy is called slothful induction fallacy or appeal to coincidence .

It is the tendency to deny a conclusion even though there is sufficient evidence that supports it. Slothful induction occurs due to our natural tendency to dismiss events or facts that do not align with our personal biases and expectations. For example, a researcher may try to explain away unexpected results by claiming it is just a coincidence.

To avoid a hasty generalization fallacy we need to ensure that the conclusions drawn are well-supported by the appropriate evidence. More specifically:

• In statistics , if we want to draw inferences about an entire population, we need to make sure that the sample is random and representative of the population . We can achieve that by using a probability sampling method , like simple random sampling or stratified sampling .
• In academic writing , use precise language and measured phases. Try to avoid making absolute claims, cite specific instances and examples without applying the findings to a larger group.
• As readers, we need to ask ourselves “does the writer demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the situation or phenomenon that would allow them to make a generalization?”

The hasty generalization fallacy and the anecdotal evidence fallacy are similar in that they both result in conclusions drawn from insufficient evidence. However, there is a difference between the two:

• The hasty generalization fallacy involves genuinely considering an example or case (i.e., the evidence comes first and then an incorrect conclusion is drawn from this).
• The anecdotal evidence fallacy (also known as “cherry-picking” ) is knowing in advance what conclusion we want to support, and then selecting the story (or a few stories) that support it. By overemphasizing anecdotal evidence that fits well with the point we are trying to make, we overlook evidence that would undermine our argument.

Although many sources use circular reasoning fallacy and begging the question interchangeably, others point out that there is a subtle difference between the two:

• Begging the question fallacy occurs when you assume that an argument is true in order to justify a conclusion. If something begs the question, what you are actually asking is, “Is the premise of that argument actually true?” For example, the statement “Snakes make great pets. That’s why we should get a snake” begs the question “are snakes really great pets?”
• Circular reasoning fallacy on the other hand, occurs when the evidence used to support a claim is just a repetition of the claim itself.  For example, “People have free will because they can choose what to do.”

In other words, we could say begging the question is a form of circular reasoning.

Circular reasoning fallacy uses circular reasoning to support an argument. More specifically, the evidence used to support a claim is just a repetition of the claim itself. For example: “The President of the United States is a good leader (claim), because they are the leader of this country (supporting evidence)”.

An example of a non sequitur is the following statement:

“Giving up nuclear weapons weakened the United States’ military. Giving up nuclear weapons also weakened China. For this reason, it is wrong to try to outlaw firearms in the United States today.”

Clearly there is a step missing in this line of reasoning and the conclusion does not follow from the premise, resulting in a non sequitur fallacy .

The difference between the post hoc fallacy and the non sequitur fallacy is that post hoc fallacy infers a causal connection between two events where none exists, whereas the non sequitur fallacy infers a conclusion that lacks a logical connection to the premise.

In other words, a post hoc fallacy occurs when there is a lack of a cause-and-effect relationship, while a non sequitur fallacy occurs when there is a lack of logical connection.

An example of post hoc fallacy is the following line of reasoning:

“Yesterday I had ice cream, and today I have a terrible stomachache. I’m sure the ice cream caused this.”

Although it is possible that the ice cream had something to do with the stomachache, there is no proof to justify the conclusion other than the order of events. Therefore, this line of reasoning is fallacious.

Post hoc fallacy and hasty generalisation fallacy are similar in that they both involve jumping to conclusions. However, there is a difference between the two:

• Post hoc fallacy is assuming a cause and effect relationship between two events, simply because one happened after the other.
• Hasty generalisation fallacy is drawing a general conclusion from a small sample or little evidence.

In other words, post hoc fallacy involves a leap to a causal claim; hasty generalisation fallacy involves a leap to a general proposition.

The fallacy of composition is similar to and can be confused with the hasty generalization fallacy . However, there is a difference between the two:

• The fallacy of composition involves drawing an inference about the characteristics of a whole or group based on the characteristics of its individual members.
• The hasty generalization fallacy involves drawing an inference about a population or class of things on the basis of few atypical instances or a small sample of that population or thing.

In other words, the fallacy of composition is using an unwarranted assumption that we can infer something about a whole based on the characteristics of its parts, while the hasty generalization fallacy is using insufficient evidence to draw a conclusion.

The opposite of the fallacy of composition is the fallacy of division . In the fallacy of division, the assumption is that a characteristic which applies to a whole or a group must necessarily apply to the parts or individual members. For example, “Australians travel a lot. Gary is Australian, so he must travel a lot.”

Base rate fallacy can be avoided by following these steps:

• Avoid making an important decision in haste. When we are under pressure, we are more likely to resort to cognitive shortcuts like the availability heuristic and the representativeness heuristic . Due to this, we are more likely to factor in only current and vivid information, and ignore the actual probability of something happening (i.e., base rate).
• Take a long-term view on the decision or question at hand. Look for relevant statistical data, which can reveal long-term trends and give you the full picture.
• Talk to experts like professionals. They are more aware of probabilities related to specific decisions.

Suppose there is a population consisting of 90% psychologists and 10% engineers. Given that you know someone enjoyed physics at school, you may conclude that they are an engineer rather than a psychologist, even though you know that this person comes from a population consisting of far more psychologists than engineers.

When we ignore the rate of occurrence of some trait in a population (the base-rate information) we commit base rate fallacy .

Cost-benefit fallacy is a common error that occurs when allocating sources in project management. It is the fallacy of assuming that cost-benefit estimates are more or less accurate, when in fact they are highly inaccurate and biased. This means that cost-benefit analyses can be useful, but only after the cost-benefit fallacy has been acknowledged and corrected for. Cost-benefit fallacy is a type of base rate fallacy .

In advertising, the fallacy of equivocation is often used to create a pun. For example, a billboard company might advertise their billboards using a line like: “Looking for a sign? This is it!” The word sign has a literal meaning as billboard and a figurative one as a sign from God, the universe, etc.

Equivocation is a fallacy because it is a form of argumentation that is both misleading and logically unsound. When the meaning of a word or phrase shifts in the course of an argument, it causes confusion and also implies that the conclusion (which may be true) does not follow from the premise.

The fallacy of equivocation is an informal logical fallacy, meaning that the error lies in the content of the argument instead of the structure.

Fallacies of relevance are a group of fallacies that occur in arguments when the premises are logically irrelevant to the conclusion. Although at first there seems to be a connection between the premise and the conclusion, in reality fallacies of relevance use unrelated forms of appeal.

For example, the genetic fallacy makes an appeal to the source or origin of the claim in an attempt to assert or refute something.

The ad hominem fallacy and the genetic fallacy are closely related in that they are both fallacies of relevance. In other words, they both involve arguments that use evidence or examples that are not logically related to the argument at hand. However, there is a difference between the two:

• In the ad hominem fallacy , the goal is to discredit the argument by discrediting the person currently making the argument.
• In the genetic fallacy , the goal is to discredit the argument by discrediting the history or origin (i.e., genesis) of an argument.

False dilemma fallacy is also known as false dichotomy, false binary, and “either-or” fallacy. It is the fallacy of presenting only two choices, outcomes, or sides to an argument as the only possibilities, when more are available.

The false dilemma fallacy works in two ways:

• By presenting only two options as if these were the only ones available
• By presenting two options as mutually exclusive (i.e., only one option can be selected or can be true at a time)

In both cases, by using the false dilemma fallacy, one conceals alternative choices and doesn’t allow others to consider the full range of options. This is usually achieved through an“either-or” construction and polarised, divisive language (“you are either a friend or an enemy”).

The best way to avoid a false dilemma fallacy is to pause and reflect on two points:

• Are the options presented truly the only ones available ? It could be that another option has been deliberately omitted.
• Are the options mentioned mutually exclusive ? Perhaps all of the available options can be selected (or be true) at the same time, which shows that they aren’t mutually exclusive. Proving this is called “escaping between the horns of the dilemma.”

Begging the question fallacy is an argument in which you assume what you are trying to prove. In other words, your position and the justification of that position are the same, only slightly rephrased.

For example: “All freshmen should attend college orientation, because all college students should go to such an orientation.”

The complex question fallacy and begging the question fallacy are similar in that they are both based on assumptions. However, there is a difference between them:

• A complex question fallacy occurs when someone asks a question that presupposes the answer to another question that has not been established or accepted by the other person. For example, asking someone “Have you stopped cheating on tests?”, unless it has previously been established that the person is indeed cheating on tests, is a fallacy.
• Begging the question fallacy occurs when we assume the very thing as a premise that we’re trying to prove in our conclusion. In other words, the conclusion is used to support the premises, and the premises prove the validity of the conclusion. For example: “God exists because the Bible says so, and the Bible is true because it is the word of God.”

In other words, begging the question is about drawing a conclusion based on an assumption, while a complex question involves asking a question that presupposes the answer to a prior question.

“ No true Scotsman ” arguments aren’t always fallacious. When there is a generally accepted definition of who or what constitutes a group, it’s reasonable to use statements in the form of “no true Scotsman”.

For example, the statement that “no true pacifist would volunteer for military service” is not fallacious, since a pacifist is, by definition, someone who opposes war or violence as a means of settling disputes.

No true Scotsman arguments are fallacious because instead of logically refuting the counterexample, they simply assert that it doesn’t count. In other words, the counterexample is rejected for psychological, but not logical, reasons.

The appeal to purity or no true Scotsman fallacy is an attempt to defend a generalisation about a group from a counterexample by shifting the definition of the group in the middle of the argument. In this way, one can exclude the counterexample as not being “true”, “genuine”, or “pure” enough to be considered as part of the group in question.

To identify an appeal to authority fallacy , you can ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the authority cited really a qualified expert in this particular area under discussion? For example, someone who has formal education or years of experience can be an expert.
• Do experts disagree on this particular subject? If that is the case, then for almost any claim supported by one expert there will be a counterclaim that is supported by another expert. If there is no consensus, an appeal to authority is fallacious.
• Is the authority in question biased? If you suspect that an expert’s prejudice and bias could have influenced their views, then the expert is not reliable and an argument citing this expert will be fallacious.To identify an appeal to authority fallacy, you ask yourself whether the authority cited is a qualified expert in the particular area under discussion.

Appeal to authority is a fallacy when those who use it do not provide any justification to support their argument. Instead they cite someone famous who agrees with their viewpoint, but is not qualified to make reliable claims on the subject.

Appeal to authority fallacy is often convincing because of the effect authority figures have on us. When someone cites a famous person, a well-known scientist, a politician, etc. people tend to be distracted and often fail to critically examine whether the authority figure is indeed an expert in the area under discussion.

The ad populum fallacy is common in politics. One example is the following viewpoint: “The majority of our countrymen think we should have military operations overseas; therefore, it’s the right thing to do.”

This line of reasoning is fallacious, because popular acceptance of a belief or position does not amount to a justification of that belief. In other words, following the prevailing opinion without examining the underlying reasons is irrational.

The ad populum fallacy plays on our innate desire to fit in (known as “bandwagon effect”). If many people believe something, our common sense tells us that it must be true and we tend to accept it. However, in logic, the popularity of a proposition cannot serve as evidence of its truthfulness.

Ad populum (or appeal to popularity) fallacy and appeal to authority fallacy are similar in that they both conflate the validity of a belief with its popular acceptance among a specific group. However there is a key difference between the two:

• An ad populum fallacy tries to persuade others by claiming that something is true or right because a lot of people think so.
• An appeal to authority fallacy tries to persuade by claiming a group of experts believe something is true or right, therefore it must be so.

To identify a false cause fallacy , you need to carefully analyse the argument:

• When someone claims that one event directly causes another, ask if there is sufficient evidence to establish a cause-and-effect relationship. 
• Ask if the claim is based merely on the chronological order or co-occurrence of the two events. 
• Consider alternative possible explanations (are there other factors at play that could influence the outcome?).

By carefully analysing the reasoning, considering alternative explanations, and examining the evidence provided, you can identify a false cause fallacy and discern whether a causal claim is valid or flawed.

False cause fallacy examples include: 

• Believing that wearing your lucky jersey will help your team win 
• Thinking that everytime you wash your car, it rains
• Claiming that playing video games causes violent behavior 

In each of these examples, we falsely assume that one event causes another without any proof.

The planning fallacy and procrastination are not the same thing. Although they both relate to time and task management, they describe different challenges:

• The planning fallacy describes our inability to correctly estimate how long a future task will take, mainly due to optimism bias and a strong focus on the best-case scenario.
• Procrastination refers to postponing a task, usually by focusing on less urgent or more enjoyable activities. This is due to psychological reasons, like fear of failure.

In other words, the planning fallacy refers to inaccurate predictions about the time we need to finish a task, while procrastination is a deliberate delay due to psychological factors.

A real-life example of the planning fallacy is the construction of the Sydney Opera House in Australia. When construction began in the late 1950s, it was initially estimated that it would be completed in four years at a cost of around $7 million.

Because the government wanted the construction to start before political opposition would stop it and while public opinion was still favorable, a number of design issues had not been carefully studied in advance. Due to this, several problems appeared immediately after the project commenced.

The construction process eventually stretched over 14 years, with the Opera House being completed in 1973 at a cost of over $100 million, significantly exceeding the initial estimates.

An example of appeal to pity fallacy is the following appeal by a student to their professor:

“Professor, please consider raising my grade. I had a terrible semester: my car broke down, my laptop got stolen, and my cat got sick.”

While these circumstances may be unfortunate, they are not directly related to the student’s academic performance.

While both the appeal to pity fallacy and   red herring fallacy can serve as a distraction from the original discussion topic, they are distinct fallacies. More specifically:

• Appeal to pity fallacy attempts to evoke feelings of sympathy, pity, or guilt in an audience, so that they accept the speaker’s conclusion as truthful.
• Red herring fallacy attempts to introduce an irrelevant piece of information that diverts the audience’s attention to a different topic.

Both fallacies can be used as a tool of deception. However, they operate differently and serve distinct purposes in arguments.

Argumentum ad misericordiam (Latin for “argument from pity or misery”) is another name for appeal to pity fallacy . It occurs when someone evokes sympathy or guilt in an attempt to gain support for their claim, without providing any logical reasons to support the claim itself. Appeal to pity is a deceptive tactic of argumentation, playing on people’s emotions to sway their opinion.

Yes, it’s quite common to start a sentence with a preposition, and there’s no reason not to do so.

For example, the sentence “ To many, she was a hero” is perfectly grammatical. It could also be rephrased as “She was a hero to  many”, but there’s no particular reason to do so. Both versions are fine.

Some people argue that you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition , but that “rule” can also be ignored, since it’s not supported by serious language authorities.

Yes, it’s fine to end a sentence with a preposition . The “rule” against doing so is overwhelmingly rejected by modern style guides and language authorities and is based on the rules of Latin grammar, not English.

Trying to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition often results in very unnatural phrasings. For example, turning “He knows what he’s talking about ” into “He knows about what he’s talking” or “He knows that about which he’s talking” is definitely not an improvement.

No, ChatGPT is not a credible source of factual information and can’t be cited for this purpose in academic writing . While it tries to provide accurate answers, it often gets things wrong because its responses are based on patterns, not facts and data.

Specifically, the CRAAP test for evaluating sources includes five criteria: currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose . ChatGPT fails to meet at least three of them:

• Currency: The dataset that ChatGPT was trained on only extends to 2021, making it slightly outdated.
• Authority: It’s just a language model and is not considered a trustworthy source of factual information.
• Accuracy: It bases its responses on patterns rather than evidence and is unable to cite its sources .

So you shouldn’t cite ChatGPT as a trustworthy source for a factual claim. You might still cite ChatGPT for other reasons – for example, if you’re writing a paper about AI language models, ChatGPT responses are a relevant primary source .

ChatGPT is an AI language model that was trained on a large body of text from a variety of sources (e.g., Wikipedia, books, news articles, scientific journals). The dataset only went up to 2021, meaning that it lacks information on more recent events.

It’s also important to understand that ChatGPT doesn’t access a database of facts to answer your questions. Instead, its responses are based on patterns that it saw in the training data.

So ChatGPT is not always trustworthy . It can usually answer general knowledge questions accurately, but it can easily give misleading answers on more specialist topics.

Another consequence of this way of generating responses is that ChatGPT usually can’t cite its sources accurately. It doesn’t really know what source it’s basing any specific claim on. It’s best to check any information you get from it against a credible source .

No, it is not possible to cite your sources with ChatGPT . You can ask it to create citations, but it isn’t designed for this task and tends to make up sources that don’t exist or present information in the wrong format. ChatGPT also cannot add citations to direct quotes in your text.

Instead, use a tool designed for this purpose, like the Scribbr Citation Generator .

But you can use ChatGPT for assignments in other ways, to provide inspiration, feedback, and general writing advice.

GPT  stands for “generative pre-trained transformer”, which is a type of large language model: a neural network trained on a very large amount of text to produce convincing, human-like language outputs. The Chat part of the name just means “chat”: ChatGPT is a chatbot that you interact with by typing in text.

The technology behind ChatGPT is GPT-3.5 (in the free version) or GPT-4 (in the premium version). These are the names for the specific versions of the GPT model. GPT-4 is currently the most advanced model that OpenAI has created. It’s also the model used in Bing’s chatbot feature.

ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, an AI research company. It started as a nonprofit company in 2015 but became for-profit in 2019. Its CEO is Sam Altman, who also co-founded the company. OpenAI released ChatGPT as a free “research preview” in November 2022. Currently, it’s still available for free, although a more advanced premium version is available if you pay for it.

OpenAI is also known for developing DALL-E, an AI image generator that runs on similar technology to ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI, the company that developed and released it. OpenAI is a company dedicated to AI research. It started as a nonprofit company in 2015 but transitioned to for-profit in 2019. Its current CEO is Sam Altman, who also co-founded the company.

In terms of who owns the content generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI states that it will not claim copyright on this content , and the terms of use state that “you can use Content for any purpose, including commercial purposes such as sale or publication”. This means that you effectively own any content you generate with ChatGPT and can use it for your own purposes.

Be cautious about how you use ChatGPT content in an academic context. University policies on AI writing are still developing, so even if you “own” the content, you’re often not allowed to submit it as your own work according to your university or to publish it in a journal.

ChatGPT is a chatbot based on a large language model (LLM). These models are trained on huge datasets consisting of hundreds of billions of words of text, based on which the model learns to effectively predict natural responses to the prompts you enter.

ChatGPT was also refined through a process called reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), which involves “rewarding” the model for providing useful answers and discouraging inappropriate answers – encouraging it to make fewer mistakes.

Essentially, ChatGPT’s answers are based on predicting the most likely responses to your inputs based on its training data, with a reward system on top of this to incentivise it to give you the most helpful answers possible. It’s a bit like an incredibly advanced version of predictive text. This is also one of ChatGPT’s limitations : because its answers are based on probabilities, they’re not always trustworthy .

OpenAI may store ChatGPT conversations for the purposes of future training. Additionally, these conversations may be monitored by human AI trainers.

Users can choose not to have their chat history saved. Unsaved chats are not used to train future models and are permanently deleted from ChatGPT’s system after 30 days.

The official ChatGPT app is currently only available on iOS devices. If you don’t have an iOS device, only use the official OpenAI website to access the tool. This helps to eliminate the potential risk of downloading fraudulent or malicious software.

ChatGPT conversations are generally used to train future models and to resolve issues/bugs. These chats may be monitored by human AI trainers.

However, users can opt out of having their conversations used for training. In these instances, chats are monitored only for potential abuse.

Yes, using ChatGPT as a conversation partner is a great way to practice a language in an interactive way.

Try using a prompt like this one:

“Please be my Spanish conversation partner. Only speak to me in Spanish. Keep your answers short (maximum 50 words). Ask me questions. Let’s start the conversation with the following topic: [conversation topic].”

Yes, there are a variety of ways to use ChatGPT for language learning , including treating it as a conversation partner, asking it for translations, and using it to generate a curriculum or practice exercises.

AI detectors aim to identify the presence of AI-generated text (e.g., from ChatGPT ) in a piece of writing, but they can’t do so with complete accuracy. In our comparison of the best AI detectors , we found that the 10 tools we tested had an average accuracy of 60%. The best free tool had 68% accuracy, the best premium tool 84%.

Because of how AI detectors work , they can never guarantee 100% accuracy, and there is always at least a small risk of false positives (human text being marked as AI-generated). Therefore, these tools should not be relied upon to provide absolute proof that a text is or isn’t AI-generated. Rather, they can provide a good indication in combination with other evidence.

Tools called AI detectors are designed to label text as AI-generated or human. AI detectors work by looking for specific characteristics in the text, such as a low level of randomness in word choice and sentence length. These characteristics are typical of AI writing, allowing the detector to make a good guess at when text is AI-generated.

But these tools can’t guarantee 100% accuracy. Check out our comparison of the best AI detectors to learn more.

You can also manually watch for clues that a text is AI-generated – for example, a very different style from the writer’s usual voice or a generic, overly polite tone.

Our research into the best summary generators (aka summarisers or summarising tools) found that the best summariser available in 2023 is the one offered by QuillBot.

While many summarisers just pick out some sentences from the text, QuillBot generates original summaries that are creative, clear, accurate, and concise. It can summarise texts of up to 1,200 words for free, or up to 6,000 with a premium subscription.

Try the QuillBot summarizer for free

Deep learning requires a large dataset (e.g., images or text) to learn from. The more diverse and representative the data, the better the model will learn to recognise objects or make predictions. Only when the training data is sufficiently varied can the model make accurate predictions or recognise objects from new data.

Deep learning models can be biased in their predictions if the training data consist of biased information. For example, if a deep learning model used for screening job applicants has been trained with a dataset consisting primarily of white male applicants, it will consistently favour this specific population over others.

A good ChatGPT prompt (i.e., one that will get you the kinds of responses you want):

• Gives the tool a role to explain what type of answer you expect from it
• Is precisely formulated and gives enough context
• Is free from bias
• Has been tested and improved by experimenting with the tool

ChatGPT prompts are the textual inputs (e.g., questions, instructions) that you enter into ChatGPT to get responses.

ChatGPT predicts an appropriate response to the prompt you entered. In general, a more specific and carefully worded prompt will get you better responses.

Yes, ChatGPT is currently available for free. You have to sign up for a free account to use the tool, and you should be aware that your data may be collected to train future versions of the model.

To sign up and use the tool for free, go to this page and click “Sign up”. You can do so with your email or with a Google account.

A premium version of the tool called ChatGPT Plus is available as a monthly subscription. It currently costs £16 and gets you access to features like GPT-4 (a more advanced version of the language model). But it’s optional: you can use the tool completely free if you’re not interested in the extra features.

You can access ChatGPT by signing up for a free account:

• Follow this link to the ChatGPT website.
• Click on “Sign up” and fill in the necessary details (or use your Google account). It’s free to sign up and use the tool.
• Type a prompt into the chat box to get started!

A ChatGPT app is also available for iOS, and an Android app is planned for the future. The app works similarly to the website, and you log in with the same account for both.

According to OpenAI’s terms of use, users have the right to reproduce text generated by ChatGPT during conversations.

However, publishing ChatGPT outputs may have legal implications , such as copyright infringement.

Users should be aware of such issues and use ChatGPT outputs as a source of inspiration instead.

According to OpenAI’s terms of use, users have the right to use outputs from their own ChatGPT conversations for any purpose (including commercial publication).

However, users should be aware of the potential legal implications of publishing ChatGPT outputs. ChatGPT responses are not always unique: different users may receive the same response.

Furthermore, ChatGPT outputs may contain copyrighted material. Users may be liable if they reproduce such material.

ChatGPT can sometimes reproduce biases from its training data , since it draws on the text it has “seen” to create plausible responses to your prompts.

For example, users have shown that it sometimes makes sexist assumptions such as that a doctor mentioned in a prompt must be a man rather than a woman. Some have also pointed out political bias in terms of which political figures the tool is willing to write positively or negatively about and which requests it refuses.

The tool is unlikely to be consistently biased toward a particular perspective or against a particular group. Rather, its responses are based on its training data and on the way you phrase your ChatGPT prompts . It’s sensitive to phrasing, so asking it the same question in different ways will result in quite different answers.

Information extraction  refers to the process of starting from unstructured sources (e.g., text documents written in ordinary English) and automatically extracting structured information (i.e., data in a clearly defined format that’s easily understood by computers). It’s an important concept in natural language processing (NLP) .

For example, you might think of using news articles full of celebrity gossip to automatically create a database of the relationships between the celebrities mentioned (e.g., married, dating, divorced, feuding). You would end up with data in a structured format, something like MarriageBetween(celebrity 1 ,celebrity 2 ,date) .

The challenge involves developing systems that can “understand” the text well enough to extract this kind of data from it.

Knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) is the study of how to represent information about the world in a form that can be used by a computer system to solve and reason about complex problems. It is an important field of artificial intelligence (AI) research.

An example of a KRR application is a semantic network, a way of grouping words or concepts by how closely related they are and formally defining the relationships between them so that a machine can “understand” language in something like the way people do.

A related concept is information extraction , concerned with how to get structured information from unstructured sources.

Yes, you can use ChatGPT to summarise text . This can help you understand complex information more easily, summarise the central argument of your own paper, or clarify your research question.

You can also use Scribbr’s free text summariser , which is designed specifically for this purpose.

Yes, you can use ChatGPT to paraphrase text to help you express your ideas more clearly, explore different ways of phrasing your arguments, and avoid repetition.

However, it’s not specifically designed for this purpose. We recommend using a specialised tool like Scribbr’s free paraphrasing tool , which will provide a smoother user experience.

Yes, you use ChatGPT to help write your college essay by having it generate feedback on certain aspects of your work (consistency of tone, clarity of structure, etc.).

However, ChatGPT is not able to adequately judge qualities like vulnerability and authenticity. For this reason, it’s important to also ask for feedback from people who have experience with college essays and who know you well. Alternatively, you can get advice using Scribbr’s essay editing service .

No, having ChatGPT write your college essay can negatively impact your application in numerous ways. ChatGPT outputs are unoriginal and lack personal insight.

Furthermore, Passing off AI-generated text as your own work is considered academically dishonest . AI detectors may be used to detect this offense, and it’s highly unlikely that any university will accept you if you are caught submitting an AI-generated admission essay.

However, you can use ChatGPT to help write your college essay during the preparation and revision stages (e.g., for brainstorming ideas and generating feedback).

ChatGPT and other AI writing tools can have unethical uses. These include:

• Reproducing biases and false information
• Using ChatGPT to cheat in academic contexts
• Violating the privacy of others by inputting personal information

However, when used correctly, AI writing tools can be helpful resources for improving your academic writing and research skills. Some ways to use ChatGPT ethically include:

• Following your institution’s guidelines
• Critically evaluating outputs
• Being transparent about how you used the tool

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Our APA experts default to APA 7 for editing and formatting. For the Citation Editing Service you are able to choose between APA 6 and 7.

Yes, if your document is longer than 20,000 words, you will get a sample of approximately 2,000 words. This sample edit gives you a first impression of the editor’s editing style and a chance to ask questions and give feedback.

How does the sample edit work?

You will receive the sample edit within 24 hours after placing your order. You then have 24 hours to let us know if you’re happy with the sample or if there’s something you would like the editor to do differently.

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Yes, you can upload your document in sections.

We try our best to ensure that the same editor checks all the different sections of your document. When you upload a new file, our system recognizes you as a returning customer, and we immediately contact the editor who helped you before.

However, we cannot guarantee that the same editor will be available. Your chances are higher if

• You send us your text as soon as possible and
• You can be flexible about the deadline.

Please note that the shorter your deadline is, the lower the chance that your previous editor is not available.

If your previous editor isn’t available, then we will inform you immediately and look for another qualified editor. Fear not! Every Scribbr editor follows the  Scribbr Improvement Model  and will deliver high-quality work.

Yes, our editors also work during the weekends and holidays.

Because we have many editors available, we can check your document 24 hours per day and 7 days per week, all year round.

If you choose a 72 hour deadline and upload your document on a Thursday evening, you’ll have your thesis back by Sunday evening!

Yes! Our editors are all native speakers, and they have lots of experience editing texts written by ESL students. They will make sure your grammar is perfect and point out any sentences that are difficult to understand. They’ll also notice your most common mistakes, and give you personal feedback to improve your writing in English.

Every Scribbr order comes with our award-winning Proofreading & Editing service , which combines two important stages of the revision process.

For a more comprehensive edit, you can add a Structure Check or Clarity Check to your order. With these building blocks, you can customize the kind of feedback you receive.

You might be familiar with a different set of editing terms. To help you understand what you can expect at Scribbr, we created this table:

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When you place an order, you can specify your field of study and we’ll match you with an editor who has familiarity with this area.

However, our editors are language specialists, not academic experts in your field. Your editor’s job is not to comment on the content of your dissertation, but to improve your language and help you express your ideas as clearly and fluently as possible.

This means that your editor will understand your text well enough to give feedback on its clarity, logic and structure, but not on the accuracy or originality of its content.

Good academic writing should be understandable to a non-expert reader, and we believe that academic editing is a discipline in itself. The research, ideas and arguments are all yours – we’re here to make sure they shine!

After your document has been edited, you will receive an email with a link to download the document.

The editor has made changes to your document using ‘Track Changes’ in Word. This means that you only have to accept or ignore the changes that are made in the text one by one.

It is also possible to accept all changes at once. However, we strongly advise you not to do so for the following reasons:

• You can learn a lot by looking at the mistakes you made.
• The editors don’t only change the text – they also place comments when sentences or sometimes even entire paragraphs are unclear. You should read through these comments and take into account your editor’s tips and suggestions.
• With a final read-through, you can make sure you’re 100% happy with your text before you submit!

You choose the turnaround time when ordering. We can return your dissertation within 24 hours , 3 days or 1 week . These timescales include weekends and holidays. As soon as you’ve paid, the deadline is set, and we guarantee to meet it! We’ll notify you by text and email when your editor has completed the job.

Very large orders might not be possible to complete in 24 hours. On average, our editors can complete around 13,000 words in a day while maintaining our high quality standards. If your order is longer than this and urgent, contact us to discuss possibilities.

Always leave yourself enough time to check through the document and accept the changes before your submission deadline.

Scribbr is specialised in editing study related documents. We check:

• Graduation projects
• Dissertations
• Admissions essays
• College essays
• Application essays
• Personal statements
• Process reports
• Reflections
• Internship reports
• Academic papers
• Research proposals
• Prospectuses

Calculate the costs

The fastest turnaround time is 24 hours.

You can upload your document at any time and choose between three deadlines:

At Scribbr, we promise to make every customer 100% happy with the service we offer. Our philosophy: Your complaint is always justified – no denial, no doubts.

Our customer support team is here to find the solution that helps you the most, whether that’s a free new edit or a refund for the service.

Yes, in the order process you can indicate your preference for American, British, or Australian English .

If you don’t choose one, your editor will follow the style of English you currently use. If your editor has any questions about this, we will contact you.

CIPPET Study Support: How to avoid plagiarism

• University jargon-buster
• 2. Library resources
• 3. Literature searching
• University policy and penalties
• How to avoid plagiarism
• Using EndNote
• Developing your ideas and argument
• Structuring your work and paragraphing
• Writing at level 7
• Writing at level 6
• Reflective models and language
• 8. Understanding feedback
• 9. Preparing for exams and OSCEs
• 10. Presentations

Tips on avoiding plagiarism

Here are a few tips but if this is a matter where you are still confused or uncertain please talk to the course director or one of your module teaching staff. When preparing an essay or dissertation, it is best to read a book or article page by page or section by section and then to write notes on it in your own words , unless you come across a particularly important passage or a phrase where the author seems to put a point in a very effective way, in which cases you may want to copy out the exact wording into your notes. You might also want to copy out sections of a primary source in case you wish to refer to it in an essay or dissertation. But make sure that you indicate to yourself, by a foolproof method that you will always remember, such as by using inverted commas or a different coloured pen, where you have copied out passages or expressions from any source. Always note the details of the source including page number where the material you have copied occurs in case you wish to cite it as a quotation in your essay or dissertation. An essay or dissertation is expected to be in your own words entirely, save where you are using direct quotations from primary or secondary sources. If you use material from a book or article, you must always acknowledge the source . If it is a phrase, sentence or longer passage, then it should appear as a quotation between inverted commas and there should be a footnote giving full bibliographic details. You must also reference any electronic material where you have used the Web as a source. If you are using someone else's ideas but not their words you should employ phrases such as 'Jones argues…', again giving the source of your information. Works quoted or cited should always appear in the bibliography, as should any other books or articles which you have used in the writing of your essay. You should never take material from a book or article and merely change the wording a little, passing it off as your own work . Adding a reference at the end of a paragraph (particularly when this is repeated for several paragraphs) is an indication that the student has not really analysed the material fully. Never indulge in the practice, which is sometimes tolerated at school, where you put together an essay in a kind of cut-and-paste fashion by stringing together phrases or sentences from a series of works. Do not use lengthy quotations from other sources , and never write essays which are no more than a series of quotations strung together, even if they are acknowledged. This is just bad style and does not show your analysis. Never employ anyone to write an essay for you. Never download essays from any website. If you use material from the Web you should acknowledge it as in the case of material drawn from books. Finally remember the last part of the definition for plagiarism given earlier: ‘ .. the representation of them as one's own original work.’ When submitting coursework you are required to sign a declaration that it is your own work. Only sign and submit the work if this is true!  

Avoiding unintentional plagiarism

• Avoiding unintentional plagiarism video guide
• Avoiding unintentional plagiarism guide

If you are unable to view this video on YouTube it is also available on YuJa - view the Avoiding Unintentional Plagiarism video on YuJa (University username and password required)

• Avoiding Unintentional Plagiarism transcript Read the transcript
• Avoiding unintentional plagiarism What we mean by plagiarism and how to avoid it.

Getting the most out of Turnitin

If you are unable to view this video on YouTube it is also available on YuJa - view the Getting the most out of Turnitin video on YuJa (University username and password required)

• Getting the most out of Turnitin transcript Read the transcript
• << Previous: University policy and penalties
• Next: 5. Citing references >>
• Last Updated: Mar 13, 2024 3:53 PM
• URL: https://libguides.reading.ac.uk/cippet

How to Avoid Plagiarism When Using Generative AI Tools

Plagiarism turns out to be a lingering concern when using AI tools for academic writing. While generative AI offers numerous opportunities, it also poses risks that cannot be overlooked.  When using these tools, it’s essential to consider the ethical implications and ensure proper attribution of sources. In this blog, we’ll explore how to use AI tools ethically and reduce the risks of plagiarism.   

How to Verify AI Generated Academic Content?

Verifying AI-generated academic content has become a critical task for students and researchers in maintaining academic integrity. The proliferation of advanced AI writing tools like ChatGPT has made it increasingly challenging to distinguish between human-written and AI-generated texts. Here’s a comprehensive approach to verifying AI-generated academic content –  

• Verify your sources   

AI-generated texts can sometimes contain factual inaccuracies or present information that lacks originality. To ensure ethical AI usage and prevent the risks of plagiarism, it is crucial to verify the source before integrating AI assistance. When crafting literature reviews, it’s essential to thoroughly understand your sources to guarantee the reliability and accuracy of the information presented. This involves reading through the provided documents, PDFs and being aware of the origins of the data you’re referencing. By verifying your sources, you can safely utilize AI tools under supervision, ensuring that the information presented is reliable and trustworthy. 

• Use Generative AI with Human Supervision  

Human supervision is vital while using AI tools for writing to ensure that the generated content adheres to academic standards and ethical guidelines. This supervision helps maintain the integrity of the research and ensures that the output meets the necessary criteria for scholarly work. By incorporating human oversight, potential issues such as inaccuracies or ethical concerns can be addressed and corrected. 

Even if the core idea is original, it’s essential to exercise caution when incorporating AI-generated enhancements into academic writing. Human review ensures that the AI-generated enhancements align with the original intent of the content and adhere to academic standards.  

• Cite Your Sources When Using AI  

When using AI to enhance original content, citation may not be required, but if the ideas are drawn from another source, proper paraphrasing and citation are necessary to avoid plagiarism and give credit to the original authors.  

Verifying sources ensures that the information being used is accurate and reliable. Researchers should give credit to the original authors and acknowledge their contributions to the field. This not only upholds academic integrity but also allows readers to trace the origins of ideas.  Proper citation also helps to avoid the risks of plagiarism and demonstrates respect for intellectual property rights. 

If the idea is original and not derived from previously published papers, citation may not be necessary. However, it’s still important to acknowledge the foundational knowledge in the field and the concept of “standing on the shoulders of giants.”  

• Correct Use of Quotation Marks  

When using words or phrases verbatim from other sources, it’s essential to add quotation marks. This practice indicates that the text is directly quoted from the original source. By enclosing the words within quotation marks, you are acknowledging that they belong to someone else and are not your original creation. Failure to use quotation marks when directly quoting text can lead to risk of plagiarism, so it’s crucial to employ them whenever you’re using someone else’s words exactly as they are. 

Ethical conduct in academic writing ensures transparency, integrity, and respect for the contributions of others, ultimately advancing knowledge and scholarship in their respective fields. By following these guidelines, researchers and PhD students can enhance their writing while avoiding the pitfalls of plagiarism.  

Paperpal is a comprehensive AI writing toolkit that helps students and researchers achieve 2x the writing in half the time. It leverages 21+ years of STM experience and insights from millions of research articles to provide in-depth academic writing, language editing, and submission readiness support to help you write better, faster.  

Get accurate academic translations, rewriting support, grammar checks, vocabulary suggestions, and generative AI assistance that delivers human precision at machine speed. Try for free or upgrade to Paperpal Prime starting at US$19 a month to access premium features, including consistency, plagiarism, and 30+ submission readiness checks to help you succeed.  

Experience the future of academic writing – Sign up to Paperpal and start writing for free!  

Related Reads:

What are journal guidelines on using generative ai tools.

• How to Avoid Plagiarism? Tips and Advice for Academics
• Types of Plagiarism and 6 Tips to Avoid it in Your Writing 
• What are the Benefits of Generative AI for Academic Writing?

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