Use of the Internet among dental students in Turkey.

The extent to which dental students in Suleyman Demirel University (Turkey) use the Internet during their undergraduate dental training and their attitudes towards the Internet in general were assessed in this study. Ninety-three percent of the students use the Internet in various frequencies. Seven percent stated that they do not know how to use the Internet and, in this regard, the gender proportion was higher in the female students (p=0.026). In general, male students use the Internet more often than their female counterparts (p<0.001). Although a similar proportion of students (approximately 55 percent) use the Internet to retrieve information for general and dental topics, dental topics were searched in the Internet less frequently. To obtain information on dental topics, students generally referred to lecture handouts or textbooks (76 percent) while 32 percent accessed the Internet. Students who use the Internet to obtain information on dental topics most commonly preferred the university sites (71 percent), followed by search engines by performing key word searches (47 percent). The texts are the most commonly accessed materials (83 percent). Clinical photographs were accessed by 53 percent and histopathologic and radiographic materials by 14 percent of the students.