Barriers to Research in Medical Sciences from the Viewpoints of Faculty Members of Birjand University of Medical Sciences in 2012

In carrying out research activities, sometimes there are problems and obstacles that identifying and studying their factors, can help to solve them. Understanding these factors in academic and research communities can improve the relationship between researchers and research users, and can actually cause problem-solving process to facilitate the use of research findings. This study intends to investigate the views of researchers about the barriers affecting research activities and take effective steps to promote research activities.
This cross-sectional study was conducted through Census. The population consisted of the entire faculty members of Birjand University of Medical Sciences, in 2012. Among the 119 questionnaires distributed, 102 were reviewed. The Research instrument was a questionnaire in six areas: financial, facilities, professional, scientific, personal, and organizational-managerial barriers which was designed in five-choice Likert scale. Data was analyzed through using descriptive statistics and Friedman two-way analysis of variance by ranks.
Faculty members, confirmed the effects of all the obstacles in research activities, but organizational-managerial barriers (3.73±0.63), financial barriers (3.62±0.72) and professional barriers (3.61±0.62) had the greatest effects, respectively, and scientific barriers (3.15±0.93) had the lowest effect.
The results of this study suggest that researchers have the motivation to do research and attention to the problems, solutions such as enabling researchers to use new technologies in the creation of research teams, and taking advantage of research experts in the various stages of medical sciences research can have a positive impact in addressing the problems and barriers to research.