Assessment of three modes knowledge, attitude and enthusiasm of dental postgraduates towards scientific research in private dental college at Kanpur district - A cross-sectional study

Context: Scientific research is an indispensable part of health-care curricula and a crucial exercise to help evolve clinician's research adroitness. Aims: The survey was planned to gauge and assess the postgraduates (PGs) dental students knowledge, attitude, and interest toward scientific research and to determine the factors and their perception for the dearth of research interest. Settings and Design: A cross-sectional, questionnaire-based research was done after the approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee and obtaining written informed consent from participants. Subjects and Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 224 (1st year, 2nd year, and 3rd year PGs) dental students of a private dental college in Kanpur city with a prevalidated structured questionnaire on the research principles was developed, and the students were asked to fill the questionnaire. Results: In the present study, 73% of the PGs did not know the definition of the research hypothesis. Ninety-two percent of PGs do not know the significance of scale 0–5 in researches, and 75% of PGs were unaware of the value of taking approval for conducting a research study. These results were statistically significant (P < 0.05). PGs have not participated in any research projects during their under-graduation or internship (93%) nor have written any scientific publication (94%), and the results obtained were statistically significant. The lack of time due to the vast curriculum of PG students (55%) and lack of interest (52%) were the personal reasons, whereas inadequate financial support (47%) and lack of time (49%) were among the institutional reasons for not conducting the research. Conclusions: A positive attitude but with a deficient level of knowledge and interest in context to research was found among PG dental students. Various factors such as vast PG syllabus, lack of time, deficient financial support, and lack of proper seemed to be the barriers in pursuing research