Dear Sir
By now the assumption that psychosocial issues are central to clinical practice seems to be widely accepted. However, the idea that medical schools could be an important intellectual centre for ideas and research regarding psychosocial matters appears to be less common. At the University Medical Centre in Hamburg, an interdisciplinary team of psychologists, sociologists and physicians tried to address this issue by developing, evaluating and implementing a training program in social scientific research for undergraduate medical students.
In 2009, 19 second-year students took part in the course ‘Basics in Social Scientific Research’, which included the autonomous conduction of a simple study. This ‘study’ dealt with a research question students chose themselves (e.g., ‘Impact of stress on academic records’, ‘Learning habits in male and female medical students’). The course started with an introduction to scientific basics followed by a presentation of several study designs, which were discussed in regard to adequacy for students’ research questions. During the following lesson, central aspects of planning a study were taught. Afterwards the constructs to survey were operationalized, a study population was defined and instruments were screened, selected or even developed. A session on data collection and management followed. Then, students were introduced to working with SPSS 15. They analysed their data and prepared results, which were presented as scientific posters during the last session.
Participants exhibited a considerable increase in subjective perceived competencies with large effect sizes (d = 0.80–1.50). Significant gain of knowledge was also observed in a multiple choice test. Further, almost all participants (90%) stated that their interest in research has been aroused throughout the course and a vast amount (95%) felt prepared for own scientific activities after participating in the course. These encouraging results point towards a continuation of the program. However, students in intervention were self-selected and presumable already specially interested in social scientific research prior to taking part in the course. Considering the marginal percentage of applicants for our training program (3% of all second-year students), it stands out that the overall interest in research-related course offerings is quite low among undergraduate medical students. As university teachers involved in faculty development, one should be aware of this condition and think about actions to raise medical students’ interest in scientific work early in their academic studies.