Introduction: Some individual and environmental factors affect on learning and learners’ educational progress, among them, motivation plays a prominent and perhaps more important role. Students’ motivation for learning can be affected by a set of correlated factors Knowing these factors help teacher choose appropriate teaching learning activities and strategies, interact effectively with learners and also improve teaching effectiveness. The aim of this study was to determine the educational motivation and its effective factors from the viewpoints of nursing students in Ahvaz Jondishopour university of medical sciences.

  Methods:This is a descriptive-analytic study, 155 nursing students were selected by census sampling .The tools for data collection includes: demographic data form and self-designed Motivation Questionnaire contain of four dimensions: primary and secondary physiologic motivations, mental-social motivations, spiritual and educational motivations. The reliability of questionnaire was assessed by Cronbach's Alpha ( α =0.86). The data were analyzed using descriptive and Pearson’s linear correlation coefficient, Spearman’s correlation coefficient, independent T-test and multiple response tests in SPSS software version 16.

  Results : Mean and standard deviation of students’ academic motivation was 86.3±19.2, and 50.7 percent of them had academic motivation scores higher than average. 60.6 and 49.7 percent of students had higher scores than average in spiritual and social dimensions respectively. A negative significant correlation was observed between semester and motivation(r=-0.21, p=0.007). Also there was a significant relation between marriage status and motivation (p<0.05). The most factors that increased motivation were Achieve their fellow service (71.6%), Provide more opportunities to help families (69.7%), achieve dignity living (65.8%) respectively. giving lower level duties to nursing students in clinical field (59.4%), physicians’ attitude toward nursing (51.6%), society attitude toward nursing (50.3%) and how doctors behave to nursing students (50.3%) were the most factors that decrease motivation.

Conclusion: The result showed that the students had average level of educational motivation and this is decreased during course study. So it is possible to improve the students’ motivation by adjustment of society and care givers views.