Knowledge, Attitude and Practice on Medical Research: The Perspective of Medical Students

Abstract

This descriptive cross sectional study was conducted to assess the level of knowledge, attitudes and practices towards research among Undergraduate Medical students. This study also focused to emphasize the need of Research Methodology training programs for undergraduate medical students. About 308 undergraduate medical students of S.R.M. Medical College, Chennai were given a structured questionnaire to evaluate their knowledge, attitudes and practices about medical research. A total of 301 returned the completed questionnaires and were included in the analysis. Data collected was subjected to descriptive analysis. About 68.4% of students are interested in participating in research and 9.3% of them actively participated in research projects. Lack of knowledge about research methodology (40.86%), lack of time (39.86%), Lack of guidance (14.2%) and lack of financial support (4.6%) were considered as the obstacles to carry out research projects by the interested students. In conclusion even though a fair number of undergraduate students interested in research, a very few actively participate in research projects. This was probably due to lack of knowledge about research methodology and lack of time.

Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices in Research among Postgraduate Students in Dental Schools of Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

“…In the present study, lesser number of participants (36.8%) have presented poster or research paper in conference. This was in accordance with the studies done by Rani and Priya, 12 Giri et al, 11 and Pawar et al 9 The present study showed that higher number of participants have experience of writing research paper. This was not in accordance with the study conducted by Sharma et al, 13 Pawar et al, 9 and Rani and Priya.…”

“…The present study concluded that maximum number of participants (67.7%) were willing to participate in workshop on research methodology. This was in accordance with studies conducted by Giri et al, 11 Rani and Priya, 12 Sharma et al, 13 and Pawar et al 9 The present studies revealed that higher number of PGs have publications in journals. Similar studies done by Giri et al 11 and Pawar et al 9 were in contradiction with our study.…”

“…Our study revealed majority of participants, i.e., 70.7%, did not know from whom to seek approval for conducting clinical research using new drugs in India. This was in accordance with the study done by Giri et al 11 and Rani and Priya, 12 while other studies Sharma et al 13 and Pawar et al 9 gave opposite results. In our study, higher number of participants (72.9%) knew when should consent for trial be obtained.…”

“…In our study, higher number of participants (72.9%) knew when should consent for trial be obtained. This was in accordance with the study conducted by Rani and Priya, 12 Pawar et al, 9 and Sharma et al 13 All the associations were found significant except: Do you know the full form of MEDLINE and MEDLARS? where significant results were not found.…”

“…Lesser number of participants (36.8%) knew the definition of research hypothesis. This was in accordance with the studies done by Giri et al, 11 Rani and Priya, 12 and Sharma et al, 13 while another study done by Pawar et al 9 showed higher number of participants (58.0%) knew the definition of research hypothesis. In the present study, majority of participants (64.7%) did not know the full form of MEDLINE.…”