Obstacles to Research in Medical Sciences in Iran

Background: Investigating the obstacles to research in developing countries can yield valuable outcomes. Thus, the universities that seek global competition and progress should identify and remove the barriers to research to provide the researchers with the opportunity for performing more studies. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the obstacles to research and the viewpoints of faculty and nonfaculty members of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. Materials and Methods: This study was conducted using two consecutive methods among the researchers of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences. First, a qualitative phase was conducted and followed by a cross-sectional phase using convenience sampling. At the end, 105 questionnaires were filled out in academic year 2011-12. The questions were classified into three areas of management-organizational, financial-equipment, and personal-professional and were ranked from very unimportant to very important by Likert scale. SPSS 17 was used for statistical analysis. Results: Three areas of management-organizational, financial-equipment, and personal-professional were the main core variables. The findings showed that the problems for performing research were high workload and different expectations of the university from the faculty members and researchers (Mean, 4.63), lack of time due to educational tasks (Mean, 4.31), and lack of funding support (Mean, 4.13). Considering the barriers, the highest and lowest means belonged to financial-equipment (Mean, 3.75 ± 0.65) and personal-professional (Mean, 3.35 ± 0.82) obstacles, respectively. Conclusions: There were significant problems in different phases of performing a research, which must be identified and solved. Moreover, all the motivations for conducting a useful research should be prepared.