gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: In Hungary Medical-, Dental- and Pharmacy-Students must write a dissertation as part of the final assessment for their degree to receive the doctorate. The students should work on self-selected or on teacher-suggested topics, they must also demonstrate the use of the scientific method, as well as document and present their results of working at scientific level. The research profile of our institute is based on the disciplines of "Medical Humanities", they however other research methods require than the medical researches and clinical studies. This study is intended to examine the dissertations in the archive of the institute of behavioural sciences (covering the period from 1990 to 2012) to ascertain trends of research topics and research methods.

Material and Method: At present the archive includes 282 dissertations written by students of tree Faculties: Medical Faculty 199 (71%), Dental Faculty 52 (18%); Faculty of Pharmacy 31 (11%). The data were analyzed using statistical methods.

Results: We made a distinction between two periods:

• Period I. from 1990 to 2000;
• Period II. from 2000 to 2012.

151 (54%) by the whole dissertations were written in the first period; and 131 (46%) in the second period. Subjects in the period I.: medical ethics 71 (47%), health care system and health care services 51 (34%), health promotion and disease prevention 18 (12%), medical anthropology 11 (7%). Methods in this period: predominantly theoretical and/or historical analysis; systematic literature reviews. Subjects in the period II.: medical ethics 45 (34%), health promotion and disease prevention 27 (21%), medical anthropology 26 (20%), health care system and health care services 18 (14%), psychology 15 (11%). Methods: quantitative questioning surveys 57 (44%), systematic literature reviews 28 (21%), qualitative interviews 21 (16%), case studies 13 (10%), document analysis 7 (5%) participant observations 5 (4%).

Conclusion: Around the turn of the millennium changes can be documented: thematic enlargement of research background on the one hand; diversity in research methods of the students on the other hand. During the study period an unequivocal tendency is to be ascertained: the number of the purely theoretical-analytical works reduced, practically-oriented subjects came to the front more and more. Independent research or project-shaped adaptation of problems is often complemented with realizable ideas and solution proposals [1], [2], [3].