Attitudes of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University of Khuzestan Students toward Academic Cheating and It’s Effecting Factors

The purpose of this study was to investigate students’ attitudes toward academic cheating and its effecting factors in the Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University of Khuzestan. This research has been done through a descriptive-correlational method and data were gathered through a questionnaire. The statistical population of the study consisted of 1456 undergraduate students of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University of Khuzestan, among whom 232 were selected by using a stratified sampling method. The results of the research showed that the most common methods of cheating in exams are to look at the sheets and write on paper, and the most common methods of cheating in homework are getting articles from the Internet and taking homework from classmates. The results of correlation analysis showed that there is a negative and significant relationship between the mean of the variable and the attitude toward cheating. The results of the Mann Whitney test also showed that there is a significant difference between the attitudes of people with a dismissed background and those who do not have a dismissed background. According to the results of Kruskal Wallis test, there is a significant difference between the students of the three colleges regarding of attitude towards cheat, and students of the Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Rrural Development had a more negative attitude towards cheating. The results of factor analysis also showed that two factors of educational planning weakness and situational factors can explain more than 40% of variance in the motivation of academic cheating.