Is this project realistic

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Mindyaown

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Hey everyone,

I had the idea of conducting research on a specific group of medical students. I was hoping to send out a survey to potentially all DO schools (& maybe MD) but I dont know if that is a realistic goal. I have never conducted research myself and just want to obtain data on how many medical students identify as X / family income range. Do you guys think it would actually be possible to contact most if not all DO schools? Do you think DO schools would be willing to send the survey out to their students? I don't have a mentor within medicine so I am looking for some guidance. Thanks guys. & Sorry if this is a dumb question.

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Hi there. I'm an incoming first year medical student so my opinion may not hold as much weight as some of the other wonderful mentors on here, but I just wanted to let you know that this is actually a great question. I completed my MPH during a gap year and have had some research experience, as I designed, implemented, and completed an independent research project. You have a great goal of collecting important information pertaining to medical students, which I'm sure you will be using to answer some research questions you have come up with.

I think the first step in this would be to start on a smaller scale to get your feet wet. Find a mentor at your school or a close-by school that does survey-based or community-based research. Maybe try to run this experiment with just your medical school and a couple others in the region to make sure you really understand your research process. After you have this preliminary data and have possibly gotten a paper published on this study, it may be easier to recruit more schools or organizations on a wider scale. Your job as a researcher is to take this data and show how it affects the health or current understanding of your population of interest, which is medical students in this case.

Research definitely is not easy and takes a great deal of time/effort. However, it is a skill that can be improved on with practice and repetition. Your idea is absolutely realistic if you are able to show how this data will contribute to the health and/or understanding of a population. After you are able to frame the utility of your research appropriately and find a mentor in the field, just grind until you make it. I hope this helps somewhat and would be happy to answer any research related questions that you may have (ex. how to prepare an IRB proposal, study design, importance of ethics, methods of statistical analysis). Best of luck with this great endeavor!
 
You’ll have to go through your school and likely an IRB but if it’s approved it shouldn’t be an issue. I got at least a dozen or so surveys from various schools over my medical school career.
 
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just want to obtain data on how many medical students identify as X / family income range.

What would be your goal? This data is already gathered via the application service
 
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