perspectives of teachers and students on the reasons behind students’ engagement in cheating on exams: a delphi study

Introduction: academic misconduct specifically cheating is much debated in literature.cheating on exams undermines educational integrity and student development. the purposeof this study was to explore the perspectives of teachers and students on the underlyingreasons behind students’ engagement in cheating on exams.methods: this study employed a qualitative delphi technique and four rounds of delphi wereconducted with 42 participants to narrow down the reasons behind students’ engagement incheating on exams at sirjan school of medical sciences in 2024. participants were selectedthrough purposive sampling, and included students (n=30), and teachers (n=12). to collectdata, an electronic questionnaire was developed and distributed in delphi rounds over aperiod of five weeks. thematic analysis using the six steps proposed by braun and clarkewas employed to identify and analyze key themes and concepts. data analysis was performedusing maxqda-10 software. the ten most significant reasons were systematically rankedusing a 5-point likert scale.results: among students, 60.0% were male (n=18) and 40.0% were female (n=12). in contrast,the teacher group consisted of 66.7% males (n=8) and 33.3% females (n=4). students hada mean age of 22.73±1.12 years and teachers averaged 36.50±2.10 years. findings revealeda consensus between teachers and students, though their prioritization of these factorsdiffered. the most significant factors identified by both groups were “fear of failure”, “lackof student engagement”, “lack of formative assessment”, “lack of knowledge”, “exam anxiety”,“unmonitored environment”, “exam room layout”, “competition among peers”, “normalizingcheating”, and “lack of perseverance”.conclusion: the identified factors are critically important to be taken into considerationto avert academic misconduct by university students. therefore, there is a need to orientstudents on the consequences of academic misconduct in a dual effort between universityofficials and teachers to promote academic integrity.