Abstract:

The aim of this study was to determine the attitudes and anxiety levels of students in the Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation towards scientific research. The sample of the study consisted of 220 undergraduate students who were actively studying in the Department of Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation in the academic year 2021-2022 in different universities in Istanbul, whose language of instruction was Turkish or English. It is a descriptive and cross-sectional study. Research Anxiety Scale(RAS); Attitude Towards Scientific Research Scale (ATSRS) and student demographic information and introduction form were used as data collection tools. According to the results of the study, the mean score of the ATSRS was 114.76±15.29 for females and 107.22±15.99 for males, and there was no significant difference between them in terms of gender (t=2.921, p=0.004). The students who were willing to do scientific research (117.40±14.58) and participated in scientific meetings (116.08±15.64) had significantly higher scores on the ATSRS than the students who were unwilling (104.24±14.26) and did not participate (109.00±14.89) (p=0.001). Analyses according to the grade level of the students, no statistically significant difference was found between the mean scores of ATSRS (f=1.336, p=0.26). When the anxiety levels were analysed, it was found that students who were willing to do scientific research (41(13-59)) were statistically significant different from those who were unwilling (37(17-49)) and students who regularly followed scientific journals (42(18-55)) were significantly different from those who did not (39(17-56)) (p=0.01). When the scoring of the Research Anxiety Scale was analysed according to the grade level of students, it was seen that there was a significant difference between the anxiety levels of the grades (p<0.001). In addition, a low positive correlation (r=0.15; p=0.026) was found between ATSRS and RAS. As a result of the study, it was concluded that physiotherapy students’ anxiety and attitudes towards scientific research were at a moderate level.

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