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Attitudes and perceptions about health research in students and professionals

Introduction: Attitudes and perceptions about health research are important to understand the degree of willingness to participate in scientific studies as volunteer and contribute to health sciences evolution [1–3]. In Portugal, no studies were found around this theme, so the aim of this paper is to explore perceptions in people related and non-related to health sciences. Materials and methods: This is a transversal, exploratory study. A web-based survey was conducted between February and April 2018 to students and workers of the Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco (IPCB). The survey was based on an existing instrument for measure the public’s attitudes and willingness to participate in scientific research denominated by “Research Attitudes Questionnaire” (RAQ) [1], scoring between 1 and 5 as a likert scale, although it was not validated or translated to Portuguese culture. Overall means of each statement agreement are the first outcome of this study. Secondary sub-analysis was made on selected socio-demographic characteristics (age, graduation, previous participation in research as a volunteer). Descriptive and comparative analyses were performed. Correlation of spearman and t-student test were used considering p < 0.05. The study was approved by a Committee of Ethics. Results: A total of 441 questionnaires were returned. This sample had in average 33.1 ± 14.7 years, 69% were females, 162 were workers (corresponding to 25% of IPCB´s workers), 280 were students (corresponding to 7% of IPCB´s students) and 74,2% never participated in a study as a volunteer. The higher scores of concordance were obtained in the statements “Society needs to devote more resources to health research” (4.43 ± 0.75) and “We all have some responsibility to help others by volunteering for health research” (4.19 ± 0.84) and the lower scores in “Participating in health research is generally safe” (3.66 ± 0.84) and “If I volunteer for health research, I know my personal information will be kept private and confidential” (3.86 ± 0.92). Sub-analysis found inverse mild correlation between age and trust in keeping data confidentiality. Also, significant differences were found in accordance scores between health students and non-health students, students and professionals, participants and non-participants in previous studies as volunteers and academic qualifications. Discussion and conclusions: In general, attitudes about health research seem to be positive. Willingness to participate in scientific studies in this sample could be mainly conditioned due to security issues, leading to some doubts about the harmless effects of participating in scientific research as a volunteer. Qualitative studies could bring new insights about the factors that lead people to participate or not in scientific trials.