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Research training is a part of medical curricula of all medical teaching institutes of Sri Lanka. Training is conducted
either through a community stream research project or via an
elective research program. The community stream research
project is compulsory and takes place before the final year
clinical rotations. It encourages undergraduates to communicate with a selected local community to identify public
health concerns and to conduct a basic research. Though a
well-planned research teaching structure is observed, there
is yet minimal evidence, on how medical students self assess
their research skills and aptitudes. We aimed to develop a
brief study tool to appraise perceived levels of individual
student ability to conduct research and attitudes towards
learning such skills, among medical students of the Faculty
of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka (FMK).
In 2013 we conducted a descriptive study approved by the
FMK ethical clearance board (P202/12/2012). The study tool
development was informed by previous research and discussed
with student representatives early in the research process [ 1-3].
’Ihe components identified were: (1) research idea generation,
(2) literature review, (3) research methodology development,
(4) data management, (5) discussion and conclusion writing, (6)
presentation and writing up for publications. Each component
was linked to a Likert scale with skill grading of‘poor’, ‘average’,
‘good’ and ‘very good’. The tool was distributed among first and
second year students between July 2013 and March 2014. Verbal
consent was obtained from all participating students.
One hundred and twenty-seven students responded.
Many of the students perceived their research skills’ to be
‘average’ or ‘poor’ on the ‘skills’ evaluated. Average ratings
were found for research idea generation (64%); data management (68%); and writing the conclusion (71%). Skills were
rated as average/poor for writing a literature review (78%)
and poor for research methodology (79%) and discussion
writing (45%). Interestingly, students perceived they had
‘good’ or ‘very good’ skills in presenting research findings
(82%) but only 9% stated that they have good’ or ‘very good’
skills in writing-up the research. All the participants wanted
to learn and gain more research skills in the future.
These findings based on the self-perceptions of students risk
being an incorrect reflection of their actual aptitudes especially
if the students had been too critical of themselves. Each component of a research paper was defined as a separate and precise skill required. This, although essentially a self-evaluation
of individual research skills rather than a scientific method,
helped us comprehend where students perceived they had gaps
in their ‘ability’. Since each of these components have different
ideal methods for learning, we saw no fault in identifying each
as a specific skill set. Many of the students recognized that they
were good at generating research ideas yet they lacked the ability
to carry out an accurate literature review - which could lead
to inadvertent duplication of previous studies. When students
are trained on critical review of literature prior to identifying
research opportunities they may not act hastily on a ‘bright idea
Conducting research training at an earlier stage in the medical
learning curriculum can increase the potential for students to
identify and take-up opportunities that arise during their early
training period. These might stem from basic sciences or from
experiences gained during early clinical rotations.
