At the Department of Community Medicine at Lund University we have given courses in basic research methodology since 1989. During a ten-year period, 138 (20%) of the 700 general practitioners (GPs) in our region completed the theoretical part of our course, 104 (75%) finished their research projects, and 17 signed up as PhD students at our department. Thus, we have provided a large number of GPs with a fundamental knowledge of research methods and we have recruited new PhD students to the field of general practice.