Writing-up Request for participants to take part in interviews about recreational cocaine use

MastersResearch

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Hello everyone,

My name is Lucy, I’m a postgraduate student at Durham University completing a Master’s degree in the School of Applied Social Sciences. I’m interested in exploring the social and cultural acceptability of recreational cocaine use for my dissertation and it would be very much appreciated if you are interested in taking part.


If you are aged between 18-29 and have taken cocaine at least once in the last year, it would be great if you are happy to take part in interviews. The interviews can take place in any way you would prefer: for example, via instant messaging such as on Skype or via email.


If you are interested, please send me an email at the address below or reply to this forum message stating that you have read and understood this information and that you give your consent to participate. I will then arrange with you how and when the interview will take place. It shouldn’t take longer than thirty to forty minutes but you are welcome to spend as long as you like.


All participants will be completely anonymous as I will disguise the names of the forums and your usernames, any email addresses or other names e.g. Skype names with pseudonyms in the dissertation. You can withdraw from the research atany time or refuse to answer any questions without giving a reason.


Before you decide, you are welcome to contact me at any time to ask questions and discuss the project. You can contact me with your questions at any time during the research by replying to this forum message or by email at [email protected].My dissertation supervisor is Dr. Kate O’Brien who can be contacted via email at kate.o’[email protected]. After the research is finished, you are welcome to contact me for a copy of the research findings.

Thank you,

Best wishes,

Lucy
 
Hi pls be more specific on what you want

Hi Redrock,

Thanks for your query. Basically, I'm interested in exploring people's recreational use of cocaine and how socially and culturally acceptable it is. So in the interviews, I would be asking questions around how frequently people take cocaine, how easily available they think it is and in which settings and social situations they most frequently take it. I would then be exploring how socially acceptable people think cocaine use is among young adults generally and in certain settings e.g. in bars and night clubs. I would also like to explore how many other people they know who take cocaine recreationally and how open people are about their cocaine use with people they know.

As for how the interviews take place, there are a range of options depending on people's preferences. I'm happy to do them via email or instant messaging say on Skype. There is also an anonymous encrypted instant messaging service called TorChat if people are concerned about remaining completely anonymous and using a more secure service.

If the interviews were to be done via email, I would send people the initial questions which can be answered at their leisure and then depending on what was said, I would ask follow up questions asking for more information as well as sending out the next questions and so on. However if people don't want to answer certain questions that is completely fine.

Hope that answers your question. Let me know if you want to know anything else.
 
Hi Redrock,

Thanks for your query. Basically, I'm interested in exploring people's recreational use of cocaine and how socially and culturally acceptable it is. So in the interviews, I would be asking questions around how frequently people take cocaine, how easily available they think it is and in which settings and social situations they most frequently take it. I would then be exploring how socially acceptable people think cocaine use is among young adults generally and in certain settings e.g. in bars and night clubs. I would also like to explore how many other people they know who take cocaine recreationally and how open people are about their cocaine use with people they know.

As for how the interviews take place, there are a range of options depending on people's preferences. I'm happy to do them via email or instant messaging say on Skype. There is also an anonymous encrypted instant messaging service called TorChat if people are concerned about remaining completely anonymous and using a more secure service.

If the interviews were to be done via email, I would send people the initial questions which can be answered at their leisure and then depending on what was said, I would ask follow up questions asking for more information as well as sending out the next questions and so on. However if people don't want to answer certain questions that is completely fine.

Hope that answers your question. Let me know if you want to know anything else.

Also, I should have mentioned in my original post that this research has received ethical clearance from my dissertation supervisor from the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University.

It should also be noted that the hand in date for my dissertation is early September of this year so I am hoping to have conducted the interviews by mid July.
 
Also, I should have mentioned in my original post that this research has received ethical clearance from my dissertation supervisor from the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University.

It should also be noted that the hand in date for my dissertation is early September of this year so I am hoping to have conducted the interviews by mid July.

It would be useful to get an idea of people's views on this topic so I was thinking to also turn this thread into a discussion about the topic. Feel free to contribute even if you're not a cocaine user, any replies will be appreciated.

Firstly, I was wondering whether people here regard cocaine as a very harmful drug or do you think it can be taken in a sensible fashion so that any risks and harms are minimised?

I'm also interested to know people's views on the popularity of cocaine. Do you think in recent years that cocaine has grown in popularity and become more socially acceptable among young adults? Would you say the image of cocaine as a drug has changed at all?

Thanks.
 
Why are you only interested in 'young adults' and have a restrictive age range from 18-29?

I'm sure you have good reasons. Do tell.
 
Why are you only interested in 'young adults' and have a restrictive age range from 18-29?

I'm sure you have good reasons. Do tell.

Hi, thanks for your question, it's a good one. The reason I'm excluding under 18s is because when it comes to doing research with people classed legally as children, it poses more ethical issues because they're classed as a vulnerable population. I'm not sure I would have gotten ethical approval for it, given that I'm asking people to disclose participation in an activity which is illegal. Also, from when I was doing my literature review for this dissertation, I found from previous studies of cocaine use that although some under 18 year olds take cocaine, it's not as common and that most users start after 18. That may be to do with cocaine being more expensive than certain other drugs.

I'm interested in looking specifically at young adults because they are the population that uses cocaine recreationally the most according to all the previous research I've looked at. I chose 29 as the cut off point because I've found that those aged 18-29 have the highest rates of recreational use. Given that I am interested in exploring the extent to which cocaine is becoming socially and culturally acceptable, young adults are the population for which this question is most applicable. With other age ranges, their use of cocaine is likely too infrequent in the general population (outside of certain settings, like among wealthy business people) for there to even be much question as to whether cocaine use could be considered in any way acceptable. What I'm interested in is how socially and culturally acceptable recreational cocaine use is among the population that uses it most. Cocaine has long had a reputation as a "hard" problematic drug and I'm interested in whether this perception is changing as use has dramatically increased among young adults

Hope that answers your question.
 
Hi, thanks for your question, it's a good one. The reason I'm excluding under 18s is because when it comes to doing research with people classed legally as children, it poses more ethical issues because they're classed as a vulnerable population. I'm not sure I would have gotten ethical approval for it, given that I'm asking people to disclose participation in an activity which is illegal. Also, from when I was doing my literature review for this dissertation, I found from previous studies of cocaine use that although some under 18 year olds take cocaine, it's not as common and that most users start after 18. That may be to do with cocaine being more expensive than certain other drugs.

I'm interested in looking specifically at young adults because they are the population that uses cocaine recreationally the most according to all the previous research I've looked at. I chose 29 as the cut off point because I've found that those aged 18-29 have the highest rates of recreational use. Given that I am interested in exploring the extent to which cocaine is becoming socially and culturally acceptable, young adults are the population for which this question is most applicable. With other age ranges, their use of cocaine is likely too infrequent in the general population (outside of certain settings, like among wealthy business people) for there to even be much question as to whether cocaine use could be considered in any way acceptable. What I'm interested in is how socially and culturally acceptable recreational cocaine use is among the population that uses it most. Cocaine has long had a reputation as a "hard" problematic drug and I'm interested in whether this perception is changing as use has dramatically increased among young adults

Hope that answers your question.

Hi everyone,

Just to let you all know, I've decided to change the criteria for participating in the research. As long as you are over 18 and have taken cocaine powder at least once in your lifetime, you are eligible to take part.

If anyone who fits this new criteria would like to take part, please let me know.

Thanks,

Lucy
 
haha that's good...because I actually meant why were you cutting off at 29, not the under 18 bit you kinda assumed (I think?). I think you'll find a lot of over 29's who use coke a lot more than infrequently.

You might like to try this in EADD. Prepare to find some people not totally agreeable (we've had problems with journalists in the past so some outsiders are treated with caution).

Tell them SHM sent you and told them not to be horrible to you.
 
haha that's good...because I actually meant why were you cutting off at 29, not the under 18 bit you kinda assumed (I think?). I think you'll find a lot of over 29's who use coke a lot more than infrequently.

You might like to try this in EADD. Prepare to find some people not totally agreeable (we've had problems with journalists in the past so some outsiders are treated with caution).

Tell them SHM sent you and told them not to be horrible to you.

Yeah I also discovered on another forum that a lot of people there using the forum were older than 29 and as you say, plenty of people older than that use cocaine regularly though I found that the highest rates of use are from people in their 20s.

Would you mind explaining what you mean by EADD? Sorry for not knowing what it means!

I can understand the caution because of journalists. If there's anything I can do to help assure people that I'm not one I will do it, you can even contact my supervisor, she's happy for people to do that.
 
No, my bad and all that. Its a Bluelight forum, European & African Drug Discussion. Go to the Front Page, it's under Europe & Africa.

Oh right, thanks, but I was reading on the guide to posting research studies that you shouldn't post your recruitment thread in multiple forums on Bluelight. Before I read that, I was considering posting it in other forums as well as this one, but then I was told by the moderators to only post it here.

If you don't mind me asking, do you or have you taken cocaine yourself? It doesn't have to be in the last year as I'm now looking at lifetime use. If so, would you be happy to do the interview yourself?
 
Lucy (OP) has indicated that she now has enough participants for her study, so I've changed its status to 'writing-up'.
 
Lucy (OP) has indicated that she now has enough participants for her study, so I've changed its status to 'writing-up'.

Just to let you all know, this study is now finished. If anyone is interested in reading it, please let me know and I can send you a copy.

Thanks,

Lucy
 
Hi Lucy

It would be ideal if you could post a summary paragraph to this thread reporting the main findings of the study.

Thanks :)
 
Hi, yes that's fine, I'll post the abstract from my dissertation which summarises the findings for people to read.

It seems I don't have the ability yet to upload attachments myself so I will email one of the moderators so they can upload the full document :)

"Since the late 1990s, evidence indicates recreational cocaine has become far more widespread. This dissertation assesses whether cocaine is undertaking the normalisation process. Normalisation theory explains evidence drug use has increased and become more acceptable among young adults. However, the case for cocaine’s inclusion is ambiguous. Therefore, this research explores whether differential normalisation, which argues drugs can be normalised in some but not other contexts, is more accurate.

This dissertation utilised a qualitative case study methodology based on data from eleven interviews and a focus group. The respondents have all used cocaine and were recruited from drug forums, Facebook and Twitter. Overall this dissertation found evidence to indicate cocaine is undergoing a process of differential normalisation. For young adults who frequent the night time economy and parties across several nations, cocaine appears to be widespread and quite socially accepted. It is also popular within certain employment networks, namely among manual labourers. However, the data suggests a stigma against cocaine remains. Particularly for those from older generations, some religious groups and ethnicities, cocaine remains socially and culturally taboo. Therefore, this research provides a valuable contribution to the normalisation literature which has not explored both normalisation and differential normalisation with online samples."

Lucy
 
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