Differences in personality and character traits of occupational therapy researchers and non‐researchers: A cross‐sectional study

Research is like being a detective. You start with something you want to learn more about, or a problem you want to solve, like a mystery. Researchers uncover new knowledge through gathering clues, people's opinions, and other types of information. They put it all together to find answers. Clinical research can help health professionals, like occupational therapists, find answers to understand the types of treatments that will help their clients the most. The issue is, many occupational therapists do not know how to do research and often do not do it. In our study, we wanted to understand why this is. We found out that if an occupational therapist has a love of learning, curiosity, and creativity, they are more likely to be interested in doing research. We plan to use our findings to develop research strategies that can help occupational therapists undertake more research, because research and new knowledge helps the therapist, their workplace and their clients. In the future, we aim to design research activities that engage therapists' love of learning, curiosity, and creativity. Because after all, a little bit of detective work done collaboratively can go a long way to improving care and the wider health-care system.