Attitudes and barriers of undergraduate students towards conducting research at Fakeeh college for medical sciences, Jeddah, KSA: a cross-sectional descriptive study

ABSTRACT

Background: To evaluate attitudes and barriers toward medical research among undergraduate students at Fakeeh College for Medical Science (FCMS), Jeddah, KSA in order to improve their awareness towards medical research criteria and develop action plan to subdue all obstacles.Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional multi-disciplinary study was conducted from March to September 2018 on undergraduate students at FCMS. A questionnaire was completed by 129 students; addressing 6 factors, consisting of 30 questions 15 questions assessing the attitudes and 15 questions assessing the barriers.Results: Out of the 443 students enrolled in all 3 Programs 129 of the students responded. No significant differences towards research were noted between genders. A comparison between the three programs (medicine, nursing and medical laboratory sciences) towards research revealed that there were no statistically significant differences (P<0.01) between the 3 programs for all factors. Overall, the assessment of students' perception was the highest for factor on the relevance of research to their everyday life with a mean of 4.2 (0.40) whereas, the factor that addressed the research anxiety had the lowest perception with a mean of 3.76 (0.77).Conclusions: The majority of students in the study considered research to be valuable but, at the same time they had little time to conduct research because of their educational tasks. Accordingly, allocating credited hours in their educational schedules for research activities can help encourage students at FCMS to conduct research projects.