Attitudes, Perceptions, and Tendencies of the Iranian Students in Medical Fields towards Cheating and Academic Dishonesty

Despite universities initiating different controlling systems, cheating is still rampant and a global phenomena. One side of the problem of cheating involves the attitudes, perceptions and tendencies of the university students towards cheating and academic misconduct. The present survey seeks to elaborate on the above aspects among the students at one of the most important universities in Tehran, Iran. The study has benefitted from the translated and validated version of the questionnaire used by Lupton and Chapman (2002). The sample included 386 students studying at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU) in Tehran in different fields of medical sciences. The survey has found some very interesting results on what Iranian university students think of cheating and academic dishonesty, despite all the controlling systems used in assigning homework and initiating mid-term and final exams. Almost 81.1 % of the female students and 85.2 % of male students did not consider “giving the exam answers to someone at the following semester” an act of cheating. Moreover, 72.2 % of students responded that they had not cheated. Interestingly, 65.4 % of the respondents have admitted that they had given information of a previous exam to another student. The results showed that sex did not have any role in cheating and academic dishonesty (p=0.826). The results indicate that the students‟ attitude towards cheating and academic misconduct was significantly different (p<0.001) based on their field of study.