Existing hypothesis, same country, but different years and setting – is it plagiarism? I am working on a master-thesis research paper. Recently, I have chosen a research topic and found a related survey dataset to work with. However, just now, I have found out that other authors did the same work for the same country, but used a different survey and for years earlier. Now, I am confused about what to do. If I would carry on the research, would it be considered as a plagiarism, even though I will use another survey for later years, and work in a different setting?
Plagiarism is selling somebody else’s idea as your own. Therefore as long as you properly cite the other paper, you are in no danger of committing plagiarism. The worst that can happen is that you are reproducing an existing study¹ instead of doing something novel. Whether this is a problem, is for you and your supervisor to decide, as you know the differences in detail.

On top, suppose you hadn’t found out about the other study: In this case you would not have committed plagiarism since you cannot possibly use the ideas of others without knowing them. Had you published your paper in this case, you would perhaps² be guilty of sloppy literature research, but not of plagiarism. However, the evidence may (incorrectly) point to you being a plagiarist and thus you still want to avoid this situation.




¹ which scientists almost universally agree on being done too rarely.
² if the other paper is sufficiently easy to find