Internet and information technology use by dental
students in Chile
S. Uribe
1
and R. J. Marin˜o
2
1
School of Dentistry, University of Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile,
2
Cooperative Research Centre for Oral Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract As part of a larger cross-country survey of dental
students, students from the School of Dentistry, The University
of Valparaiso, were invited to participate in a study to describe
their use of information and communication technology (ICT).
Information was derived from a 124-item questionnaire which
included 14 socio-demographic items and 29 items asking
about ICT use. ICT items were derived from a University of
Birmingham, UK, battery. Data was collected in July and
August 2004. A total of 162 of the 249 dental students
participated in the study. The average age of students was
21.0 years (SD 2.4 years). The majority of participants (62.1%)
were female. All participants had access to a computer, and
96.4% used the Internet. Most students had home Internet
connections (73.4%). The most commonly used Internet sites
on at least a weekly basis were: email (92.2%); and search
engines (88.3%). However, a very few (21.1%) used the
Internet to search for dental information for their studies on at
least a weekly basis. Furthermore, although the majority
(70.4%) found Internet use easy/very easy, 56.2% indicated
that any search for information was easy/very easy. The
majority (72.2%) indicated that the use of virtual education
would not affect their class attendance. The final multivariate
model explained 26% of the variance in ICT use, significant
predictors for ICT use were gender, year of study, level of
difficulty in using Internet, and place of Internet use. However,
Internet use was mostly for non-dental purposes.
Key words: internet; computer literacy; dental education; dental
students.
ª Blackwell Munksgaard, 2006
Accepted for publication, 6 December 2005
T
he Internet, which has been available since the
1960s to link universities and select government
organisations, has developed into a network that
enables anybody with access to a computer to
communicate throughout the world. The 1990s saw
the emergence of the World-Wide-Web, an interface
for the user which provided easier access and encour-
aged people to take advantage of the many benefits of
the Internet (1). In most countries, the Internet is
available to the general public at home, in Internet
cafe´s, shopping centres and airports, as well as in
universities and public libraries.
People are becoming more dependent on the Inter-
net for banking, paying taxes and shopping (2). For
many, the Internet has become an integral part of
everyday life. Few days will pass when the Internet-
literate person does not access on-line information of
some kind (1), and frequency of Internet usage is
expected to increase in the future. For example, in the
USA daily usage of the Internet has expanded from
52 million people in March 2000 to 66 million in
August 2003, a growth of 27% (3). In Chile, there has
been a parallel increase in Internet usage to that of the
USA: Chile is now the second most advanced country
in Latin-American in respect of Internet use, with
25.8% of its 15 million people connected to the Internet
from their homes (2).
Although it is difficult to predict the educational
technology of the future (i.e. interactive videos and
printed materials; face-to-face courses; online courses;
CD-ROM or audiotape based material; DVD, etc.),
lifelong learning is needed as never before in the
history of Dentistry to keep pace with fast changing
technology and the exponential growth of know-
ledge. This extremely rapid progress poses challenges
for dental education as it may require new skills,
techniques and knowledge to implement a variety of
learning technologies, as well as changes in teaching
style, learning approaches and methods of accessing
the information needed to keep professionals up-
to-date with new developments in the 21st century
(4–6).
Continuous learning is now seen as a professional
responsibility and an expected attribute of graduates
of the School of Dentistry, University of Valparaiso (7).
The Internet is a powerful communication tool and a
162
Eur J Dent Educ 2006; 10: 162–168
All rights reserved
ª 2006 The Authors. Journal compilation ª 2006 Blackwell Munksgaard
european journal of
Dental Education

growing resource for the dissemination of information
and there are many benefits for dental students and
oral health professionals wishing to take responsibility
for maintaining an up-to-date knowledge base. Whilst
there is increasing research regarding use of the
Internet in dentistry and dental education (6, 8–10),
to our knowledge, no information is available about its
use in dental education in Latin America.
As a starting point to addressing these gaps in the
literature, this paper aims to describe the use (fre-
quency and purpose) of Internet and information and
communication technology (ICT) amongst undergra-
duate dental students at the School of Dentistry, The
University of Valparaiso, Valparaiso, Chile (SOUV).
Another aim of this paper is to explore the students’
views on the accuracy and relevance of Internet
information related to dentistry and to assess their
attitudes to placing lectures on the Internet.
A short description of the School of Dentistry,
University of Valparaiso is essential to place some of
our findings into a context. The School is located in
Valparaiso, the second main Chilean city. The School
was established in 1955 as part of the University of
Chile. In 1981, the School gained autonomy and it is
now the only public dental school, out of two, in the
Valparaiso metropolitan area and the only Dental
School accredited by the National Accreditation Com-
mittee of the Chilean Ministry of Education (10). At
the time of data collection for this study there were no
online courses at the SOUV. However, during 2005, a
shift from traditional teaching methods to more
Internet learning began. Post-graduate on-line courses
in Periodontology, Cariology, Paediatric Dentistry and
Evidence-Based Dentistry have been successfully
established.
Method
Population and sample
As part of a larger cross-country study on the socio-
demographic profile and cultural values of dental
students (11, 12), all 249 dental students from first to
fifth years of the Faculty of Dentistry, University of
Valparaiso, were invited to participate in this study.
However, the course at the SOUV is of 5
1
2
-year
duration. Data was collected between July and August
2004. In these periods, dental students were invited to
volunteer to participate in the study by completing an
anonymous, 124-item questionnaire during normally
scheduled lecture hours. Those who were not present
at the lecture were given another chance to complete
the questionnaire afterwards.
The questionnaire included items on socio-demo-
graphic characteristics and examined motivating fac-
tors for adopting Dentistry as a career. The
questionnaire also sought information on parental
socioeconomic status (SES) background and asked
students to complete a value orientation scale (11).
Additionally, the instrument included 29 items asking
about Internet and information technology use, adap-
ted from Walmsley et al. (5).
The study protocol was approved by the Human
Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Dentistry,
University of Valparaiso.
Measures
Socio-demographic information used in this analysis
included age, sex, and year of study.
Internet utilisation information included: frequency
of visit to Internet sites. Participants were asked to
classify themselves, on a 5-point ordinal scale, accord-
ing to the response that best described their frequency
of visit to Internet sites, as ‘daily’, ‘once a week’,
‘monthly’, ‘less than once a month’, or ‘never’. The
sites list included six alternatives: Medline, e-mail,
news portals, dental information portals and search
engines. These responses were weighted as daily, 5;
once a week, 3; monthly, 1; less than once a month, 0.5;
and never, 0. The weighted values were added across
all the sites listed to yield a total Internet use score.
Higher scores represented more frequent use. Thus, a
score of 30 indicated that a student visited all six sites
daily.
Students were also asked about the frequency of use
of six sources of information for their studies: text-
books, lecture notes, videos, Internet, self-instruction
packages, students or faculties. Responses were coded
as ‘daily’, ‘once a week’, ‘monthly’, ‘less than once a
month’, or ‘never’.
The level of difficulty in using the Internet and in
finding the information was investigated by asking
participants to indicate over a 5-point scale. Responses
were coded from: ‘very easy’ to ‘not easy at all’.
Students were also asked about how quickly they find
information on the Internet. Responses were coded
over a 5-point scale from ‘very fast to ‘not fast at all’.
Students were asked about the precision of informa-
tion found on the Internet and responses were coded
from ‘very precise; ‘to ‘very imprecise.
Data analysis
The first part of the analysis provides a profile of
dental students based on the distribution of selected
socio-demographic and Internet use variables. Data
were analysed to statistically compare results between
Internet and information technology for dental students
163