A Survey of the Zahedan Medical School Students’ View of the Research Workshop and its Effects on their Final Thesis

Background and purpose: The research workshops (RW) for the medical students have been performed at Zahedan University of Medical Sciences (ZUMS) since about ten years ago. The aim of the RW is teaching the research rules to the medical students to be used in their future researches, especially in their final thesis project.This study is planned to investigate the effect of the research RWs on the students’ final project.Methods: This descriptive research was performed in 2005 to 2006 at ZUMS. The target population was the medical students who passed the research RW and registered their final thesis project. The research sample was 155 and the data were collected using a questionnaire. For data analyzing, the descriptive statistics and nonparametric methods were applied in SPSS software.Results:The results show that 24.8% of the students believed that the effect of the RW on their projects was poor or very poor. Over 28% believed that the effect was moderate and 46.4% believed that theeffect is high or very high. Also, 86.5% of the students believed that the RW is essential for them.On the other hand, the students stated that the effects of the different sections of the RW were not the same. The section of introduction, aim and hypothesis are the most effective sections which are more applicable in their research project, while the sections of the sample size, sampling techniques and the research timetable are the least effective sections of the research RW. Also, 50.3% of the students believed that the best time for the RW is in externship period and 39.4% said that the best time is in internship period. Furthermore, 45.2% believed that the full time 3 or 4 day RW is not suitable and they suggested a minimum of a 7 day part time RW to learn better. The students also believed that thepractical parts of the RW are the most effective parts. The most important problem during the projects as stated by the students are determining the sample size, sampling techniques, writing the references and plotting the tables and graphs.Conclusion: It seems that the RW programs need to be revised and the part time RWs should be replaced. The period of the different parts of the RWs should be changed according to their importance and effects on the students’ final projects. If the RWs are less effective due to its time, periods, lecturers or syllabus, it needs to be reformed; otherwise the RWs will need to be stopped.