Introduction:

research abilities are an essential aspect during the training of the Dentistry professional.

Objective:

to diagnose the development of the ability to handle scientific information in students of the basic cycle of the Dentistry specialty.

Materials and method:

a descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out with the participation of 43 first and second year students of the Dentistry specialty in the 2018-2019 school year, chosen through an intentional sampling. Document reviewing and a questionnaire on the perception of the ability domain. Three main dimensions were assessed: cognitive, evaluative and executive.

Results:

the students perceive to have bigger mastery of the actions: consulting information sources, summarizing; presenting essential ideas and using computing resources. The less mastered actions turned out to be the use of citations and references according to Vancouver standards, writing the final bibliographic review report up and the identification of scientific information sources. There is thematic diversity in the bibliographic reviews carried out by students and the main ways of disseminating information are course work and student scientific conferences, although less than half of the students positively values the experience in conducting research.

Conclusions:

An adequate mastery of the ability is evidenced in correspondence with the objectives stated in the curriculum. However, it is necessary to generate educational actions contributing to satisfying the persisting learning needs and increasing the students’ research experiences.

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