Research approaches and statistical analyses used by dentistry students at the University of Los Andes, Venezuela

Abstract

As part of their career, since the last years, dentistry students at the University of Los Andes do research from the first year in which they start with a documental review. Then, in the second they work with descriptive studies, and in the third they can do experimental research. Finally, in their fourth year, they start planning their final research as a requirement to get their degrees and it is up to them to select the approach and type of research they want to conduct. This study arose with the objective of describing the research methods, designs and statistical analyses students select for their final papers. In this sense, a corpus of research papers developed by dentistry students as a requirement to get their degree was examined and classified. Results show that quantitative approaches are the most popular. However, a slight trend to incorporate qualitative methodologies was observed in the most recent papers. It was also observed the high amount of descriptive studies which happen to be most popular among the quantitative studies. Statistical analyses used are mainly descriptive. Results show the importance to encourage students to do research under different research approaches that let them to research problems from different perspectives.