Knowledge and Attitude about Research Ethics and Research Ethics Committees among Paramedical Undergraduates

Awareness on ethics and ethics committee is mandatory for any researcher. So this study was to assess the knowledge and attitude of the final year paramedical undergraduate students about research ethics and ethical committees. Secondary objective was to identify the areas for improvement in knowledge.

A cross-sectional study among final year undergraduates of paramedical sciences was done after obtaining Institutional Human Ethics Committee approval. A self-administered structured validated questionnaire was given to the participants. The questionnaire were about the type of study, the need for ethical approval before the start of study, participant's autonomy, monitoring of study, studies requiring ethical clearance, members of ethical committee and roles of ethics committee. Responses were obtained and the analysis was done statistically.

A total of 161 paramedical undergraduates were included in our study. There is a statistically significant difference between researchers and non-researchers regarding awareness about ethics committee, need for approval prior to start of study, autonomy of the participants, and compensation where researchers had raise in knowledge compared to non-researchers. Most of the research participants answer towards the certainty showed the significance of methadology and risk benefit explanation to the participants, want of informed consent from the participants, and monitoring of progress of research activity by ethics committee.

This emphasises the need for introducing ethics in course curriculum and conducting period workshops or seminars to increase their awareness on ethical approval process in research.