Demographic factors and research productivity of medical students in an Adventist medical school

Abstract

This study investigated the potential relationship between selected demographic factors (such as age, sex, and pre-medical course) and research productivity of medical students in an Adventist medical school in the Philippines. Data gathering was performed via review of records and thesis manuscripts submitted by the medical students after completing Level 3 of the medical curriculum. Descriptive and inferential statistics, particularly frequency, distribution charts, and thechi-square test, were used to answer the objectives. Findings reveal that health promotion is the most common technicalarea under the NUHRA 2023-2028 chosen by the medical students. Other fields that have not yet been explored by the students include halal in health, health systems strengthening, nutrition and food security, and sexual & reproductivehealth, among others. Meanwhile, the AUP-COM, as a medical school, commonly implements research under the ‘New and Emerging areas of Wholistic Health’ as part of the research agenda of the university. Only the relationships between ‘age and research method’ and ‘age and research design’ yielded valid, although non-significant, results. While there is insufficient evidence to conclude that a medical student’s age can influence their choice of research method and research design, the distribution of clustered data points still yielded useful findings, such that younger medical student teams tend to choose a quantitative and descriptive type of research. Additionally, the study demonstrated that both female and male- dominant research teams prefer quantitative over qualitative and mixed methods, and likewise, similar student demographics prefer descriptive over analytic designs. Moreover, research teams composed of most medical students with allied health backgrounds are more likely to utilize quantitative rather than qualitative and mixed methods. Lastly, students with allied health and life science courses are more inclined to apply descriptive rather than analytic research designs. These findings inform the faculty and other relevant stakeholders of the strategic direction to enhance the research productivity of medical students under training as they become good physician-researchers in the future.