Teaching research methodology in medical schools: students' attitudes towards and knowledge about science

Abstract

Medical students have generally positive attitudes towards science and scientific research in medicine. Attendance of a course on research methodology is related to a positive attitude towards science.

Medical teachers' attitudes towards science and motivational orientation for medical research

“…Another study reported a progressively larger fraction of medical students and graduates who expressed serious interest in research careers [6]. Our research group showed that teaching research methodology is associated with increase in positive attitudes towards science among medical students [8], and that among family medicine practitioners there was a positive association between attitude toward science and opinion of research methodology training as a mandatory part of the medical curriculum [9].…”

“…The findings of our study may have important implications for developing strategies for recruiting new generations of academic physicians, as fostering positive attitudes toward science among medical students seems not only achievable [8] but also related to the intrinsic motivation, a key factor for a long-term engagement in research [24]. One of the methods to cultivate positive attitudes towards science is mentoring, which was proven to be effective among the young people [26], and was also reported to have an important influence on career choice and research productivity in the context of academic medicine [27].…”

“…Although the results of some research in student populations support a common notion that positive attitude is correlated with knowledge [8,18] or work experience [19], our study was not designed to test this relationship, so we can only assume that junior faculty gradually improve their attitudes towards science by learning and doing scientific research. Alternative explanation would be that only those teachers with positive attitude towards science stay in academia.…”

“…However, gender and professional structure of the respondents was similar to the target samples of both professors [16] and instructors/research fellows [17], so that they could be considered representative samples. Finally, the instrument we used for assessing attitudes towards science was developed and validated on a student population [8,13] and not on their teachers. However, its psychometric characteristics proved satisfactory for the assessment of the teachers' population as well.…”

“…The instrument was designed to measure attitude towards science and scientific methodology and was validated on student population [8]. We analyzed the psychometric characteristics of the instrument in terms of discriminant validity of the 24 items.…”