Exploring and comparing the difficulties among undergraduate and postgraduate students’ understanding of experimentation using primary scientific literature

We explored and compared undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) students' understanding of experimental design and its parameters: sample, control, treatment, dependent variable (DV), and independent variable (IV), based on reading Primary Scientific Literature (PSL) of a biological assay. We noticed students' difficulties in identifying control and treatment, along with assigning variables correctly. We observed that 10 of 17 UG students described the experimental design setup correctly, whereas only 2 of 17 PG students could describe it correctly. Difficulties in identifying control were seen among 58% UG and 36% PG students, while difficulties in identifying treatment were seen among 64% UG and 35% PG students. More PG (65%) than UG (35%) students had a difficulty in understanding DV though the difficulty in understanding IV was equally distributed among UG (36%) and PG (36%) students. Interchanging the DV and IV was a widespread problem among the PG cohort (53%) compared to the UG cohort (29%). Despite their additional training, PG students did not have a better understanding of parameters. The results reflect a worrying disconnect between coursework on research methodology and understanding of experimentation, especially in the Indian context. We suggest exploring using PSL as a teaching intervention in our country.