Phenomenology of cheating in exams: lived experiences of master students in Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

Cheating in exams is one of the most important cases that had violated the scientific honesty and seriously had weakened teaching quality, reliability in the assessment process and public confidence in higher education. Therefore, his study aimed to identify factors involved in cheating in exams based on lived experiences of graduate students. A qualitative research approach with descriptive phenomenology method was chosen for this study. Using snowball sampling method, 26 students were interviewed. Five main themes emerged from the analysis of the data that can describe graduate student's experiences of cheating in exams. These themes were included: educational, instructional, personality, social and environmental factors. The results can be categorized in two main internal and structural factors. Internal factors are related to talents, perceptions, realization and family environment. Structural factors are the factors that affect the performance of a person from outside environment to do the cheating.