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Plagiarism on first year(please help!)

Hey everyone.

I have a question about plagiarism on first year. I'm studying psychology and I used a second year's data to analyse instead of collecting and analysing mine. There was four of us and each one of us was going to do something. One of us was going to collect the data, the other one was going to analyse it, another one was going to fill the ethics form etc. I ended up doing everything myself as they didn't do anything until the last minute. Anyway I e-mailed my lecturer and she didn't reply back so I asked one of my coursemate for his opinion. He said he didn't collect any data and booked ab interview with the lecturer and appearently the lecturer told him to "make some data up". And then I thought it may not be a bad idea to use my friend's data as mine. When I analyse and type the data inside a table and uploaded it to turnitin it's highlighted and shows it as plagiarism. The similarity for that particular thins is below %1 but I'm really worried that I might fail or even expelled from uni. Is it likely that this will happen to me or do you think I'll be able to dodge a bullet with a warning as i'm first year and it's one of my first assignments?

Thanks

Reply 1

EllainKahlo

Unis take plagiarism, very very seriously but it came up as below 1%, that's tiny. Even mistakes could come up as below 1%. However, each department will have a percentage they deem too high. Also, most people only consider work plagiarism if you've taken the work of someone who is published but still, you did use someone else's data. Honestly I don't think you will be in trouble but you now know never to use someone else's data or you run the risk of getting expelled. I think you should just hope for the best and wait but I honestly don't you'll get in trouble for so little.