Abstract

Recent well-publicized scandals, involving unethical conduct have rekindled interest in research misconduct. The purpose of this paper is to compare the misconduct behaviour and the contributing factors across several demographic background variables including education level, age, gender, race, type of university and faculty. A survey was carried out within the Klang Valley region on 329 academicians, both male and female, with diverse background and work at either Research or Non-research Universities in Malaysia. Analyses of Variances and T-test were used to carry out the statistical analysis to compare the differences of mean score of each contributing factors across demographic variables. Overall, academicians’ behaviour toward research misconduct was found to be negative. Nevertheless, academicians’ behaviour toward research misconduct was found to be more positive in Research University as compare to Non-Research University. Results also showed that other demographic variables such as age, race and educational level fairly have a significant effect on some contributing factors to research misconduct. However, gender do not displayed any difference in their behaviour toward research misconduct. These findings expand the knowledge on the effect of demographic variables on academicians’ behaviour toward research misconduct in Malaysia. However, more in-depth research should be carried out in order to know and understand the underlying reason of these differences.