Assessment of knowledge about childhood autism among medical students from private and public universities in Karachi

Objective: to assess the knowledge about childhood autism among fourth year medical students in public and private medical universities of a metropolitan city. methods: the cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted in karachi from january to august 2012. two medical universities - one each from public and private sectors - were selected using non-probability convenience sampling technique. fourth year medical students present at the time of data collection were included in the study. data collection was done by knowledge about childhood autism among health worker questionnaire from fourth year medical students. data was analysed using spss 20. results: of the 157 students in the study, 62(39.6%) were males and 95(60.4%) were females; 84 (43.5%) were from public medical university and 73(46.5%) were from private university. total mean score obtained out of the maximum 25 was 12.30±4.71. the mean score obtained by public medical students was 12.40±4.69 and 12.1±4.76 by those of private university. conclusion: the scores reflected shortcoming in knowledge about childhood autism among the study population. in order to bridge knowledge deficit, awareness-generation activities must be held more frequently.