The Use of the Cloze Testing Procedure for Detecting Plagiarism
Teachers have been long concerned with the problem of detecting plagiarism. This study was undertaken to determine whether the cloze procedure might provide an objective, reliable, and practical method for detecting plagiarism. The objectives of the study were to: confirm that a plagiarism effect on cloze test scores exists; determine whether, if so, it is large enough to be of practical utility in detecting plagiarism; and, assuming a substantial effect is found, ascertain whether its magnitude varied as a function of the subject matter of the topic assigned, native language of the examinee, or race of the examinee. The results of this study comparing cloze test performances by plagiarists and non-plagiarists indicated substantial differences in error rates for these two groups. The data support the original hypothesis that the cloze procedure may be used as a valid and sensitive measure for discriminating plagiarists from non-plagiarists.