Information sources of Brazilian undergraduate dental students during the COVID-19 outbreak

This article has been Reviewed by the following groups

Read the full article See related articles

Abstract

Aim: This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate where Brazilian dental students seek information about COVID-19 by a self-administered web-based questionnaire. Methods: A social network campaign on Instagram was raised to approach the target population. The dental students responded to a multiple-response question asking where or with whom they get information about COVID-19. The possible answers were government official websites or health and education institutions websites, TV Programs, professors, social media, scientific articles, health professionals, and family members. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, and the frequency distributions of responses were evaluated by gender, age, type of institution, and year of enrollment. Results: A total of 833 valid responses were received. The main source of information used by the dental students were government official websites or health and education institutions websites, which were reported by 739 (88.7%) participants. In the sequence, 477 (57.3%) participants chose health professionals while 468 (56.2%) chose scientific articles as information sources. The use of social media was reported by 451 (54.1%) students, while TV programs were information sources used by 332 (39.9%) students. The least used information sources were professors, reported by 317 (38.1%) students, and family members, chosen only by 65 (7.8%) participants. Conclusion: Brazilian dental students rely on multiple information sources to stay informed about COVID-19, mainly focusing their information-seeking behavior on governmental and health professional’s websites.

Article activity feed

  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.24.20179614: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethical aspects: This research protocol was approved by the research ethics committee of the School of Dentistry of Ribeirao Preto at the University of Sao Paulo (CAAE: 33608320.5.0000.5419).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.