METHODS: A 20-item questionnaire was distributed online to medical professors of a Saudi, Malaysian and a Pakistani medical school. The participants were instructed to select their responses on a 5-point Likert's scale and the collected data was analyzed for quantitative and qualitative results.
RESULTS: Of 161, 110 responded; response rate of 68.3%. About 35% professors spent 1-4 hours and 2% spent 19-25 hours per week for research. As many as 7% did not publish a single article and 29% had published 10 or more articles after attaining professor rank. During the last two years, 44% professors had published 5 or more research articles. Majority pointed out a lack of research support and funds, administrative burden and difficulty in data collection as the main obstacles to their research.
CONCLUSIONS: This research has identified time constraints and insufficient support for research as key barriers to medical professors' research productivity. Financial and technical support and lesser administrative work load are some suggested remedies to foster the professors' research output.
AIM: To examine the use of hermeneutic phenomenology and the ethnographic principle of cultural interpretation in a research study conducted with Malaysian nurses on part-time, transnational, post-registration, top-up nursing degree programmes provided by one Australian and two UK universities.
DISCUSSION: To enable the researcher to undertake international cross-cultural research and illuminate Malaysian nurses' views for the reader, cultural aspects need to be considered, as they will influence the information participants provide. Useful strategies that western researchers can adopt to co-create research texts with interviewees are outlined. The paradigm and research designs used in the study revealed the views and experiences of Malaysian nurses.
CONCLUSION: Hermeneutic phenomenology enabled the exploration of participants' experiences, and the ethnographic principle of cultural interpretation enabled the researcher's reflexivity to provide emic and etic views for the reader.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: This paper adds to the discussion of the paradigms and research designs used for international, cross-cultural research in Asia. It identifies the influence participants' cultural values have on their confidence and level of disclosure with western researchers.
METHODS: A systematic search was conducted for articles published from January 1990 to December 2009 in PubMed/MEDLINE using terms for malaria and 11 target countries (Bhutan, China, North Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Solomon Islands, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vanuatu). The references were collated and categorized according to subject, Plasmodium species, and whether they contained original or derivative data.
RESULTS: 2,700 articles published between 1990 and 2009 related to malaria in the target countries. The annual output of malaria-related papers increased linearly whereas the overall biomedical output from these countries grew exponentially. The percentage of malaria-related publications was nearly 3% (111/3741) of all biomedical publications in 1992 and decreased to less than 1% (118/12171; p < 0.001) in 2009. Thailand had the highest absolute output of malaria-related papers (n = 1211), followed by China (n = 609) and Indonesia (n = 346). Solomon Islands and Vanuatu had lower absolute numbers of publications, but both countries had the highest number of publications per capita (1.3 and 2.5 papers/1,000 population). The largest percentage of papers concerned the epidemiology and control of malaria (53%) followed by studies of drugs and drug resistance (47%). There was an increase in the proportion of articles relating to epidemiology, entomology, biology, molecular biology, pathophysiology and diagnostics from the first to the second decade, whereas the percentage of papers on drugs, clinical aspects of malaria, immunology, and social sciences decreased.
CONCLUSIONS: The proportion of malaria-related publications out of the overall biomedical output from the 11 target Asian-Pacific countries is decreasing. The discovery and evaluation of new, safe and effective drugs and vaccines is paramount. In addition the elimination of malaria will require operational research to implement and scale up interventions.
Methods: This open label comparative design study randomized health professional clinicians to receive "practice points" on tendinopathy management via Twitter or Facebook. Evaluated outcomes included knowledge change and self-reported changes to clinical practice.
Results: Four hundred and ninety-four participants were randomized to 1 of 2 groups and 317 responders analyzed. Both groups demonstrated improvements in knowledge and reported changes to clinical practice. There was no statistical difference between groups for the outcomes of knowledge change (P = .728), changes to clinical practice (P = .11) or the increased use of research information (P = .89). Practice points were shared more by the Twitter group (P Research information delivered by either Twitter or Facebook can improve clinician knowledge and promote behavior change. No differences in these outcomes were observed between the Twitter and Facebook groups. Brief social media posts are as effective as longer posts for improving knowledge and promoting behavior change. Twitter may be more useful in publicizing information and Facebook for encouraging course completion.