Electrical conduction behavior of pristine and iodine doped polyetherimides (PEI) has been investigated under both transient and steady state conditions in the operating temperature range 50-200℃ at various electric fields of 12-60 kV/cm. The transient currents show the hyperbolic decay character

and the decay exponent

p

(a measure of current decay rate) decreases with temperature (

T

) and doping concentration. The origin of transient currents has been attributed to the dipolar nature of carbonyl (

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=O) groups and the ether linkages present in the main chain of PEI. The low field steady state conduction is ohmic in nature. The magnitudes of ionic jump distance (

a

) values do not favor an ionic type of conduction as a possible conduction mechanism in pristine as well as iodine doped PEI. The Schottky coefficients estimations do not show the possibility of Schottky type or Poole-Frenkel type conduction mechanisms in the low temperature region (

<

120℃)

however

in the high temperature region (

>

120℃) there is a certain possibility of Poole- Frenkel type conduction mechanism in both pristine and iodine doped samples. The dual slope in the lg

I

versus 1/

T

curves for iodine doped samples indicates the presence of more than one type of trapping levels.