This paper examines the concept of plagiarism in academic writing, distinguishing between deliberate copying and unintentional misuse of ideas through paraphrasing or infrequent citation. It identifies specific examples of student plagiarism, explains why rephrasing alone does not avoid plagiarism, and offers strategies for crediting sources properly. The paper then transitions to a critical evaluation of a qualitative study by Hays and Minichiello (2005) on the meaning of music in the lives of older people, assessing its evidence quality, academic tone, potential bias, professional standards, and recommendations for improving external validity for an international audience.
Plagiarism is not just the act of copying someone else's words and passing them off as your own. It is also the act of taking someone else's ideas and claiming credit for them. Plagiarism can take various forms, and the best policy to adopt when doing academic research and writing is to always give credit where credit is due. There is never an advantage to be gained from trying to steal someone else's work — but there is everything to lose. On the other hand, properly citing sources and providing a reference any time words or ideas are taken from a source is simply good academic practice, and there is no shame in citing other authors. So long as you contribute something new to the topic, citing other authors is actually looked upon favorably: it shows you have taken the time to learn what others have said on the subject.
When it comes to recognizing plagiarism, one must be on guard: ideas matter — not just words. Rephrasing words or phrases so that they appear original, or at least different from the source from which they were taken, does not free a writer from plagiarism. For example, a student may plagiarize source material even when words are rephrased. Rephrasing the words is like putting window dressing on a product stolen from a competitor — it is still the same product, merely dressed up. To recognize plagiarism, therefore, one must pay attention to the ideas behind the content as well as to the actual words used. As Walden (2018) points out, if a concept is not unique, one must credit the source from which it is derived — otherwise it constitutes plagiarism.
Of course, plagiarism is not always intentional. A student might believe he or she is being fair by paraphrasing a source, but this too is plagiarism if the resulting content matches too closely the ideas and substance of the original. A similar problem occurs when a student cites too infrequently. The student may cite at the end of a passage, but if the ideas throughout the entire paragraph closely resemble those of the original, more than one citation is needed.
The student in the example appears to have unintentionally plagiarized the original source, since a citation was included at the end to give at least some credit, and an attempt was made to paraphrase the material. However, two sentences stand out: the third sentence and the last, both of which contain phrases and ideas that bear a striking resemblance to the original. While a citation appears at the end, the only word placed in quotation marks is "buffing," which is somewhat disingenuous, because the entire list of reasons should really be cited, and the citation given is ambiguous.
A more appropriate rewrite of the passage would read as follows: "Researchers follow a precise code that obliges them to produce studies which will be checked by their colleagues. However, just because they intend to follow this code does not mean the end result is always in the clear. Sometimes researchers will fail to carry a study all the way to its conclusion, or will exclude evidence that goes against their original hypothesis, in hopes of pushing a narrative that reflects favorably on their sponsors. These are examples of the types of corruption that researchers in the medical science field are exposed to."
In order to avoid plagiarism in academic writing, two principles are essential. First, always give credit to the person or persons from whom material is obtained, whether those are direct words being quoted or ideas being paraphrased. Second, guard against unintentional plagiarism by consistently expanding on and building upon ideas encountered in sources, so as to add something original and make the contribution genuinely one's own.
The study by Hays and Minichiello (2005) uses a qualitative method to explore what music means to elderly people. The researchers conducted interviews with 52 elderly persons to identify "the meaning, importance and function of music" for this sample population (Hays & Minichiello, 2005, p. 437). The quality of evidence was high, as the researchers identified common themes that emerged from the data. The content of the article was appropriate for its intended audience: as a qualitative scholarly study, it was written with an academic tone, and its style suited the presumed audience of academics interested in the subject.
No potential bias was detected. Because the study was exploratory rather than experimental, the authors did not set out to prove a predetermined conclusion; instead, they sought to better understand a phenomenon — specifically, what music meant to older people. The article meets professional standards for scholarly writing: sources were cited throughout, the tone was appropriately academic, the method and findings were adequately described, and the conclusion was logical.
"Audience differences and external validity suggestions"
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