Enhancing skills for scientific writing: A mixed-methods study at the faculty of health sciences, damascus university

Abstract

Background

The increasing importance of scientific publications to promote community health and academic advancement highlights the need to evaluate the effectiveness of courses addressing academic writing skills, especially among Syrian students. To address this issue, we conducted a mixed-method study.

Methods

Before a workshop on scientific writing, we distributed a pre-workshop questionnaire to assess participants' sociodemographic information and their knowledge of scientific writing principles. After the workshop, we administered a second questionnaire with the same sections to measure improvements in participants' knowledge. Additionally, we introduced a scale to evaluate the workshop's effectiveness. A one-way ANOVA test was used to assess differences in attitude among participants based on their departments, and the Wilcoxon Signed test was conducted to ascertain the difference between the test results before and after the workshop.

Results

There was a significant statistical relationship between the participants’ test scores before and after the workshop for ten questions of the questionnaire (8 of which showed an increased response rate, while 2 decreased). However, there was no significant statistical relationship for the remaining five questions. There was a medium positive attitude towards the workshop which didn't have any significant statistical relationship with the participant's department at the faculty. Also, there was no significant statistical relationship between the amount of increased knowledge of the participant and their department affiliation, academic score, or the number of communication tools they possess.

Conclusion

The workshop was effective in enhancing the participants’ baseline knowledge in manuscript writing skills.