Barriers to Research Activities from the Perspective of the Students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Necessity to establish a coherent and targeted research context in order to development of any country is increasingly important. But the basic step in creating an effective research context would be enrichment motivation of researchers especially students and resolve barriers of research. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine barriers of research activities from the perspective of students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences. METHODS: This is research. Data was collected with author made questionnaire. The study sample consisted of students from Isfahan medical university and sample size based on Krejcie and Morgan table was 357. Sampling was Stratified Random. The validity of questionnaire confirmed by Library and information professionals and reliability based on Cronbach's Alpha was 0.933, respectively. The type of descriptive statistics was (percentage, frequency and mean) and inferential statistics (T-test, ANOVA, one-Sample Statistics) and SPSS software was used. FINDINGS: Results showed that the mean of barriers to research activities among students of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences was 3.89 +/- 0. 483. The highest mean was related to density of students' curriculum (4.22+/- 0.968) and lowest mean related to lack of access to appropriate library resources. Also, the mean of research activities 's barriers, according to aspects showed that the mean in individual barriers level (4.06+/-0.635) was more than other aspects: social and cultural aspects (4.01+/- 0.661), economical aspect (4.04+/- 0.787) and organizational barriers (3.78+/-0.503). The lowest mean was related to organizational barriers. Also there is no difference between mean of research activities' barriers of student of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences with regarded of gender, level of education and college. CONCLUSION: According to results of this research, although, the main barriers between students was individual barriers such as: lack of sufficient familiarity with research methods, insufficient experience in research and lack of familiarity with the terms of the articles in publication, but other aspects like economic, cultural, social and organizational was in bad condition too. Therefore it is suggested that workshops related to research methodologies is executed, like proposal writing, writing articles in university especially for students and administrators support student's research activities, effectively.