Survey of Bachelor of Pharmacy Students Thesis Trends Before, During, and After the Covid-19 Pandemic

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic spread to Indonesia in March 2020 but subsided by mid-2022. The pandemic had a major impact on the health of people all around the world and affected other aspects of life, especially education, where it affected academic activities in higher education. This study aims to describe the research patterns of a bachelor's pharmacy student's thesis before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. We also investigated the reasons for students choosing thesis research topics. The study was designed to be conducted observationally with a questionnaire to collect data. The respondents were made up of pharmacy undergraduate students at Universitas Gadjah Mada who were completing or had completed their thesis during the period before, during, or after the pandemic. The data obtained were analyzed descriptively according to the same variables, such as trends in thesis research topics, students reasons for determining topics, and the number of journal publications resulting from thesis research. The total number of respondents who completed the questionnaire was 258, with 53, 100, and 95 students conducting the research before, during, and after the pandemic, respectively. Before the pandemic, most of respondents conducted research on the topics of pharmaceutical technology (22.73). In terms of research methods, most of them conducted laboratory-based research (76.06). During the pandemic, the research topic was dominated by pharmacotherapy and clinical pharmacy (34.88), and the most common type of final project study was a literature review (47.57). After the pandemic subsided in mid-2022, the topic of pharmacy management and community pharmacy (41.94) was the most dominant. In this study, we observed that scientific interest and supervisor competence were the two main reasons for students to determine the topic of research topics. Based on this study, we conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the trends of bachelor's pharmacy students theses. 2025 by Indonesian Journal of Pharmacy (IJP).