Abstract
To determine factors affecting successful research and publication among medical students, a cross-sectional survey study was carried out at four Thai medical schools during 2018–2022. Medical students who had previously performed research under research advisors’ supervision and their research advisors were included. There were 120 participants, 78 medical students and 42 research advisors. The most common problems reported by the students were student’s lack of knowledge of research design (78%) and research topic (53%), while the most common problems reported by the advisors were student’s lack of knowledge of research topic (55%) and how to prepare documents for ethics committee approval (48%). The promoting factors for research success commonly reported by the students and advisors were “an advisor helps with protocol writing and reviewing the manuscript”, “research teaching in the curriculum”, “provision of an example of a written ethics committee protocol”, and “arranging a special session so that advisors can talk to students about their research of interest”. Among the 78 participating students, 20 (26%) had successfully published their research in journals. These 20 students were more likely than those without publications to be from an institute that had a special research project or conference for medical students (20% vs. 0%,) and to suggest that teaching protocol writing helped in promoting research success (70% vs. 43%). These findings suggest that teaching research, a special research project or conference for medical students, and faculty development of research advising could potentially increase the success rate of students’ research publications.
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Data Availability
Data supporting this study are not publicly available. Please contact the corresponding author.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Chavanant Sumanasrethakul, M.D., and Suthee Raattanamongkolgul, M.D., Ph.D. for their contributions to research idea and concept, study design, and questionnaire contents. We would like to thank Bongkot Iamchuen, B.A., M.Ed. for his help in document preparation for the ethics committee submission and creating the online questionnaire used in this study.
Funding
The study was supported by the Medical Education research grant from Faculty of Medicine, Thammasat University.
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TK contributed to conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting the article and revising it critically for important intellectual content, agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved, and final approval of the version to be published. SK contributed to conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved, and final approval of the version to be published. NC contributed to conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved, and final approval of the version to be published. KS contributed to conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, revising the article critically for important intellectual content, agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved, and final approval of the version to be published. SL contributed to conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved, and final approval of the version to be published.
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This study was approved by the ethics committee of TUMS (approval number 085/2561), KUMS (approval number HE641596), and PSUMS (approval number REC.64–062-9–1). Research conduct at SUMS was allowed under the TUMS ethics committee approval given the special research collaboration between the institutions.
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Khawcharoenporn, T., Kondo, S., Chaiear, N. et al. Factors Affecting Research Conduct and Publication Among Thai Medical Students in University-Affiliated Medical Schools. J Acad Ethics (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-023-09500-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10805-023-09500-9