A DESCRIPTIVE ASSESSMENT ON PERCEPTION OF POST GRADUATE MEDICAL STUDENTS REGARDING THE USE OF COMPUTER-BASED APPLICATION SOFTWARES FOR PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS AND DISSERTATION AT TERTIARY CARE MEDICAL COLLEGE AND HOSPITAL, CENTRAL INDIA

Kunal Modak, Vijay Babar, Kumar Bijyendra Sourabh*, Lovely Kumari and Vijaya Modak

ABSTRACT

Background: In India, Computer based application softwares are used by post-graduate (PG) medical students for their research works like research article manuscript preparation as well as dissertation. Use of application softwares is one of the important basic skills for biomedical research, which has not yet been studied in details. Objectives: A study on perception of post-graduate medical students regarding the use of application software for writing research and dissertation. Materials and Methods: The study was a cross-sectional one, conducted on post-graduates in between 15th September 2015 to 16th October 2016 at Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College and Sharad Pawar Dental College which are affiliated to Datta Meghe Institute of Medical Sciences University. Overall 210 participants working on dissertation (thesis) were included in the study, in which 157 students belong to JN medical college and 53 students belong to dental college. A consent form was added at the beginning of the questionnaire explaining the purpose of the study and requesting their participation. All the participants were examined only once. The participants were examined for use of various application software during making, analyzing dissertation. All data presentations were done using tables, bar diagram, pie diagram. Data was analyzed by using MS-excel 2007 and SPSS version 17. Results and Conclusion: From this study, we have found that most of PG medical students depend on easy softwares for their research. For writing of thesis, most of them prefer Microsoft word, for grammar check they prefer MS-word grammar checker and grammarly softwares. For plagiarism checking they prefer three softwares named ithenticate, plagiarisma, and plagiarism checker. Google scholar remains popular for article search.

Keywords: Post Graduate students, perception, software application.