comparison and evaluation of motivation and attitude of medical students at basic sciences and internship phase on cheating in exams at shahid beheshti university of medical sciences in 2012

background and purpose: there is much evidence that the prevalence of academic misbehaviors is increasing in universities. this study examined the motivation and attitudes of medical students of shahid beheshti university of medical sciences on cheating and its frequency. methods: the study is a survey of medical students’ of shahid beheshti university of medical sciences attitudes on cheating and data was analyzed using chi-square and mcnemar's test. results: one hundred and sixty medical students participated in this study. the mean and standard deviation of students’ age was 22.69±2.29 years. basic sciences and internship students’ attitudes on three cheating behaviors, including cheating from others (p=0.028), helping other students to copy answers during exams (p=0.001), and recording false reports deliberately to facilitate assignments were significantly different (p=0.0001). the students' highest motivation for cheating was fear of failing in the exam (79.3%) and difficulty of the course (77.5%). conclusions: the results showed that there were a higher number of interns than basic sciences students considered two behaviors of helping others to cheat and copying from one’s hand as cheating. it seems that policy-making in universities must be in a way that the problems of educational program, attitude and environment get more attention. in this regard, medical ethics education, reduced stress and pressure associated with medical education, fair and decisive punishment for dishonest people and appropriate resource allocation should be carried out for exam’s environment control. keywords motivation, attitude, medical students, cheating