Background and Aim: A review of the quality of the studies for the purpose of improvement of the future studies is one of the most important ways to achieve sustainable development and expand the knowledge in medical sciences. Considering the importance of medical students' education and their academic failure, the present study aimed at criticizing and representing the existing probelms in the elements of the methods of the articles in the field of academic failure published in medical journals.
Materials and Methods: The present study was a meta-method study and included all the the studies published in the Magiran, SID and Noormags databases. On the basis of our inclusion criteria we selected articles dealing with factors associated with academic failure in medical students published between 2000 and 2016 in valid internal journals. The exclusion criteria included different dates of publication, articles unrelated to academic failure and the studies on non-medical students. We found 346 articles. After exclusion of irrelevant studies, 22 articles were selected.
In order to analyze the findings, a first-order check list including elements of research method and approach, study population, study sample, sampling method, determination of sample size, hypothesis, assessment tools, reliability and validity was made.
Results: This study showed that the reviewed studies had problems in relation to sampling, data collection and research methods. And underestimation of these problems can raise challenges to the future studies.
Conclusion: It seems that, extreme attention to the content and lack of attention to the delicacies in the methodology section can lead to a decline in the quality of the researches. Using the results of these studies can be accompanied by fundamental problems and cannot always be cited.