Keywords

Anxiety; Pharmacy; Undergraduate

Introduction

Anxiety is the state characterized by worried thoughts, feelings of tension with physical changes like increased blood pressure [1]. It is the prediction of future threat; it differs from fear which is emotional response to real or perceived approaching threat [2]. The fear and uncertainty related to scientific research and production which can occur during the selection of subject to publishing and getting the feedback is known as research anxiety [3]. Occasional anxiety is common but frequent and intense anxiety affects daily activities [4]. Not only does research anxiety affect physical and mental health but also brings problem in scientific production, academic activities, work and socialization [3,5].

Various studies [6-10] have been done and it has been found that the prevalence of anxiety was higher in students of medical and health programs compared to the general public [6-8]. In a repeated measure study done in Arizona among pharmacy students, 30% of students were found to have clinically significant anxiety symptoms [9]. A Cross-Sectional Study was done in Saudi Arabia among pharmacy students in which anxiety was found to be 49% (with 25.9% having mild anxiety, 14.1% students having moderate anxiety, and 8.8% severe anxiety)[8]. A cross sectional study was done in Pokhara, Nepal among undergraduate pharmacy students where the prevalence of anxiety was found to be 46.9% [11]

Changing disease patterns and progress in science and technology has been changing the use of medicine [12]. Pharmacists’ role has developed gradually and remarkably from dispensing to optimizing drug therapy, reviewing prescription and many more [13]. Pharmacy practice, education and research process are interrelated to each other. Also since research productivity has national as well as global impact; students in pharmacy schools are involved in scholarly research activities [14]. Thus, it is essential to measure the level of research anxiety in undergraduates. Furthermore, with the objective to determine research anxiety and its relation with different dependent variables i.e. academic support, academic effort, self-efficacy and students’ attitude, this study was conducted.

Materials and Methods

Research design: Descriptive cross-sectional study.

Research setting: Different pharmacy colleges affiliated to Trribhuvan University.

Study unit: Bachelor in Pharmacy 4th year and recent pass-out batch.

Sampling method: Purposive sampling.

Sample size: 140. Response rate was 65.71%

The questionnaire was prepared and administered. Also the questionnaire was prepared in Google docs for online data collection. Questionnaire was sent to students in individual students’ g-mail id or through the class representative when individual g-mail id was not available. Out of one hundred and forty, only ninety-two responses were obtained. Questions were marked “required” in all questions which were made compulsory to be filled by all the respondents to ensure respondents to ensure the completeness of the questionnaire. Anonymity was maintained using code number instead of the name of the respondents.

Self-administered questionnaire was used in Sunsari Technical College and JFIHS. Data collection was done from December 2020 to March 2021. Researcher herself collected data from the respondents. Serial number was used to maintain the anonymity of the questionnaire.

Criteria for sample selection

Inclusion Criteria: Students willing to participate in the study.

Instrumentation

The standard tool 14 with some modification was used for data collection.

Validity and Reliability

Reliability of the instrument was tested using Cronbach’s alpha. Overall reliability score was 0.788.

The ethical approval was granted from the Institutional Research Committee IRC of Manmohan memorial Institute of Health Sciences

Formal permission was obtained from the concerned authority of Universal College of Medical Sciences (UCMS), Janamaitri Foundation Institute of Health Sciences JFIHS, Sunsari Technical College, Maharajgunj Medical Campus, Maharajgunj and National Model College for Advanced Studies after briefing about the objectives, process and importance of the study. Written consent form was attached in the questionnaire and data collection was started only after taking consent.

Descriptive and inferential statistics was used for data analysis. The data were checked for completeness, coded and entered into Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS version 20). The obtained data was analyzed based on objectives of the study using descriptive statistics like frequency, mean, standard deviation, for inferential statistics correlation was calculated. The finding of the study is presented in different tables.

Results and Discussion

Table 1: Among 92 respondents, 43 (46.7%) were males and 49 (53.3%) were females. 45 (48.9%) of the respondents stayed with their family.

The demographic details are listed in Table 1. More than half of the respondents (56.5%) were not previously involved in research. Majority of the respondents (68.5%) have not assisted research before.

Result: Assessment of academic support, academic effort, self-efficacy, students’ attitude and research anxiety

Table 2: Academic support (n=92).

Table 2 shows that majority of respondents agree (62%) on getting emotional help from their friend. Majority of respondents (62%) agree that they can talk about their problems with their friends while 42.4% of the respondents agree on talking about their problems with their lecturers.

Table 3: Academic effort (n=92).

Table 3 reveals that Majority of the respondents (60.9%) agrees that they can read and collect extra information related to research and statistics in addition to lecture notes. Majority of the respondents (60.9%) study hard and prepare well for research methods and statistics. More than half (57.6%) read the research literatures more than once to get full understanding of research.

Table 4: Self-efficacy (n=92).

Table 4 shows that that majority of the respondents (62%) agree on being able to learn research methodology and data analysis. Majority of the respondents (65.2%) agree on being interested to participate in research related courses. Majority of the respondents (66.3%) agree on being able to gather information regarding research from different sources while less than half of the respondents agree on being good at statistics. 42.4% of the respondents agree that their computer skill is adequate enough to operate computer programs.

Table 5: Students’ Attitude (n=92).

Table 5 shows that more than half of the respondents (59.8%) agree that they like research. Majority of the respondents enjoy doing research (62%) and agree that they can learn from research (60.9%). 20.7% of the respondents agree on finding statistics formula easy to understand.

Table 6: Research Anxiety (n=92).

Table 6 shows that half of the respondents agree that they worry they may not be able to complete my research on time. 48.9% of the respondents agree that they feel doing literature review difficult and time-consuming. Half of the respondents (50%) agree that they remember what to do after the experiment is already over. More than half of the respondents (57.6%) agree that they worry about whether they did well enough after completing a research project.

Discussion

Assessment of academic support, academic effort, self-efficacy, students’ attitude and research anxiety. Average mean score for academic support was found to be 3.78, while average mean score for academic effort was 4.04, self-efficacy was 3.64, Students’ attitude was 3.52 and research anxiety was 3.11. The finding was similar to the study conducted by in which average mean score of academic support, academic effort, self-efficacy, students’ attitude and research anxiety was 3.93, 3.64, 3.47, 3.37 and 3.22 respectively [14].

Table 7: Level of anxiety.

Scoring: Anxiety percentage less than 50% is considered as mild anxiety, anxiety percentage between 50% and 75% as moderate anxiety and anxiety percentage more than 75% as severe anxiety. Scoring was done using mid value approach [15].

Table 7 shows that more than half of the respondents (53.3%) had moderate level of research anxiety whereas (43.5%) had mild level of research anxiety with (33%) severe level of research anxiety.

Discussion: Findings showed that students have moderate level of research anxiety. This result is supported by the study conducted by among human resource education faculty members and the study conducted by among graduate ELT Students [16,17].

However it was in contrast to the study conducted by among postgraduate students which was above average or even high and the study conducted by among Faculty Members of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences which was higher than moderate [3,18].

Table 8: Correlation.

Table 8 shows that research anxiety has weak negative correlation with academic support which is not statistically significant (p=0.201). There is statistically significant weak negative correlation between research anxiety and academic effort (p=0.023). Statistically significant moderate negative correlation exist between research anxiety and self-efficacy (p=0.001). There is moderate negative correlation between research anxiety and students’ attitude which is statistically significant (p<0.001).

Discussion: The study revealed that research anxiety has no correlation with academic support which is in contrast to the study conducted by in Malaysia where significant strong negative correlation was found [14]. The reason for it is not known. It may be due to the difference in sample size and research setting.

The study showed that there is statistically significant weak negative correlation between research anxiety and academic effort similar to the study conducted which showed significant moderate negative correlation [14].

In this study, statistically significant moderate negative correlation between research anxiety and self-efficacy was found. The finding is supported by the study conducted by [17,19]. This is in contrast to the study conducted in which significant strong negative correlation was found [14].

There is statistically significant moderate negative correlation between research anxiety and students’ attitude which is in different from the study conducted [14]. The reason may be due to different scenario of Malaysia where focus of students is thought to be more towards pharmacy practice than research.

Conclusion

Average mean score for research anxiety was found to be 3.11. The level of research anxiety in the undergraduate students studying Bachelor in Pharmacy in Tribhuvan University was determined and found to be moderate. The study shows that there is statistically significant negative correlation of research anxiety with academic effort, self-efficacy and students’ attitude.

Recommendation

Coaching classes to the students can be conducted to help them on designing the research project, statistical analysis and operating computer programs.

Acknowledgement

We would like to express heartfelt and humble gratitude to Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences (MMIHS), Kathmandu for providing a golden opportunity for conducting this study.

Deep sense of gratitude goes to all the professionals of pharmacy department of MMIHS for their continuous motivation, encouragement, and valuable support.

Finally, Heartiest thanks to those who directly and indirectly acted as a source of inspiration and support.

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