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Are medical students inclined to do research?".

BACKGROUND
Medical research at undergraduate level has been given poor importance in developing countries including India. Less incentives, poor resources, lack of benefits has all been the reason for curbing the research interests of the students.


OBJECTIVE
This research was done to understand if medical students perceived research to be important at an undergraduate level, to understand the reasons for doing research and the benefits obtained from research.


STUDY DESIGN
Cross sectional study.


MATERIAL AND METHODS
Questionnaires were distributed to medical students studying in second, third, fourth and fifth years in the MBBS course at an undergraduate medical conference and a medical college. Questions were so designed to verify student's ideas on research, their research involvement and their reasons for conducting research. The answers were tabulated, data analyzed and statistics were made based on their answers.


STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
Frequency and percentage.


RESULTS
Out of the given sample, it was seen that though only 20.9% of the students had credited publications, 81.7% of the students admitted to research being essential to understanding and changing their perception of medicine. Only 38.3% of the sample found research to be cumbersome. 24.3% of the students were involved in research purely for the purpose of acquiring knowledge, 18.3% were pursuing interest in the field and a meager 1.7% were doing research to improve their curriculum vitae. Conclusion : These results are in conformance with other studies from elsewhere that shows decreased Indian medical student's engagement in researches, compared to those from developed countries, but on par with those from the developing countries.