2026-10-07T22:08:45Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33674683 2026-09-14T14:05:19Z category_26167 category_26179 category_29989 category_29923 category_29935 category_28864 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Postgraduate Students’ Judgements of GenAI Use in Research: A Scenario-Based Study Across Four African Countries Irina Zlotnikova (17602485) Brian Harrington (23953222) Rehema Baguma (24837293) Aliou Badara Camara (24837382) Neema Mduma (24837424) Tshepiso Mokgetse (23791949) Hlomani Hlomani (13102616) Stewart Muchuhuti (24837526) Comparative and cross-cultural education Educational technology and computing Ethical theory Ethical use of new technology Professional ethics Artificial intelligence not elsewhere classified generative AI postgraduate research research integrity ethical judgement institutional rules higher education <p dir="ltr">Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly used in postgraduate research, while recent scholarship shows that students often navigate a grey area between legitimate assistance and substitution of their own intellectual work. Less is known about how postgraduate researchers judge graded forms of GenAI involvement across institutional contexts. This multi-site scenario-based study examined 233 survey submissions from five institutional sites in Botswana, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. Participants evaluated eight postgraduate-research scenarios on two five-point outcomes: whether the conduct was unethical and whether it would be against institutional rules. The scenarios varied the amount of AI-generated material incorporated into the research product, demonstrated understanding, and stage of use. The study was framed by Jones’s issue-contingent perspective and Treviño’s person-situation interactionist model. Amount of AI-generated material was by far the strongest pooled factor for ethicality (F = 829.400, p < .001, partial η² = .316) and perceived rule violation (F = 843.205, p < .001, partial η² = .323), and it was the only positive significant scenario predictor in every country-specific ordinal model for both outcomes. Understanding was much weaker and stage of use was negligible overall. Cross-country differences were concentrated in particular scenarios rather than forming a stable ranking. The study extends scenario-based GenAI ethics research by quantifying which features of ambiguous postgraduate-research situations most strongly shape ethical and institutional judgements.</p> 2026-09-14T14:05:19Z Dataset Dataset 10.6084/m9.figshare.33674683.v3 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Postgraduate_Students_Judgements_of_GenAI_Use_in_Research_A_Scenario-Based_Study_Across_Four_African_Countries/33674683 CC BY 4.0