Writing-up A Survey of Drugs and Spirituality

MyDoorsAreOpen

MyDoorsAreOpen

Bluelight Crew
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Now Open

Bluelight's Philosophy and Spirituality forum's
Survey of Drugs and Spirituality.

You can view the offsite poll, which is now open for voting, by clicking the link above.

In this survey, we aim to uncover statistical patterns that shed light on the relationship between people's history of drug use and their view of their place in the greater picture.

More about this project, from its earliest inceptions to its present form, can be found here: http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=482657

Thanks for your input!
MyDoorsAreOpen and Raw Evil, authors.
 
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Hey! It's not ready yet! What are you doing posting about it already? I mean, I'm as excited about it as anyone, but it's not even enabled yet! The data goes nowhere, which is fine because it's missing most of the question details! -_-

EDIT: Now online!
 
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Hurry up already, im looking forward to doing this one! ;-)
 
Thanks for posting this, MyDoorsAreOpen. I didn't know you'd all be putting this together! You might want to revise the first post to indicate the survey is in draft form.

I thought it was well thought out - I completed it out of interest. I wondered if you intentionally did not ask about which drugs people had recently used; there is also no mention of country of origin (where people are living). Perhaps these questions aren't important to your investigation. I like it when people launch a survey just focused on their interest!

I think you should definitely include a place to write a comment - this is useful not only to get extra input from people but if there is a question in the survey that someone wants to discuss with you.

Also, do you just want BLers? How do you determine whether people are BLers given folks could get to the survey from any link? You may want to include some questions about people's Bluelight status so you can screen out people who don't use the site from those who do.

Hope these comments help.
 
^ Thanks for the suggestions, Tronica. We hope to have this ready to roll fairly soon.
 
I see this has migrated to DS. I take this as an indication that someone actually does intend to infer some statistical information from it. As such, I will copypasta my last response in P&S here, because I think a lot of posters on DS are familiar with statistical methodology and are more likely to agree with or criticize (I admit I'm probably wrong at some parts) this:

Very well-done RE!

Again, some (hopfully constructive) criticism if you want it to be more statistically-useful:

1. Your 4-fold choices for the spirituality/religion question are actually good, however, the "not sure" option is, IMO, unnecessary, and introduces a lot of unwanted noise. In fact, I believe there is a specific name for this kind of unwanted bias, but I don't remember it. I suggest removing it. Again, the question is: if someone answers "not sure", what use do we have for this information and any that comes of it? Is "not sure" actually measurable in some way? Do NSers even count for all the following drug-related questions?

Generally speaking, it is easier for someone (especially stoners ;)) to be "not sure" than to be anything else. The option in and of itself is unintentionally biased.

2. Your very last question is, IMO, too broad in choice. I believe you can reduce one column from the middle of each side and not see a significant difference. If this is not possible, perhaps you could use a change in the wording to reflect such a breadth.

3. One thing you may want to reflect about: If a person DID undergo a significant spiritual change, but drugs came AFTER such a change, does the poll have any way of informing you of that? As it is designed, it seems to me that the poll just assumes that drugs came first. You have a mechanism for anchoring the age of the user; You have a mechanism for timing the drug-use. Do you have one for timing the spiritual transformation?

What about those who had two significant shifts, one due not to drugs, and another due to drugs? (ie. me :p).

Again, very well designed, but I offer the above in hopes of helping if you actually intend on extracting some statistically-significant data from it.

--

And again, please do keep in mind that I offer the above because I actually care and believe that something useful may be deduced, not simply to criticize for the heck of it.
 
Hi Jamshyd. Sorry dude, I had no deliberate intention to hide this from you or anything. And I think your points are good ones. (I have to think a bit about a response to them.)

You read my intentions correctly: I would really like to do this proper. I'd like to eventually write this up as a report, including charts and graphs and properly crunched data. I welcome the input of anyone with a good solid background in stats to help with this. I actually have an exam on population health next week, but I'm a half assed statician at best. I don't care if no journal ever wants it, I think it's valuable for Bluelight's sake, both as a guide to the staff as to what kind of population we're serving, and as a resource for visitors to the site to look at and educate themselves.

Tronica, I wanted to address your point about who should be allowed/encouraged to vote. I say the only link(s) to this poll should be on Bluelight, but that anyone who finds this link on Bluelight should be encouraged to vote, from founding member to onetime lurker. This gives us the most representative slice of all English speaking people on the net who have an interest in what Bluelight is all about.
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
Hi Jamshyd. Sorry dude, I had no deliberate intention to hide this from you or anything.
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The intention was never perceived as such, no need to apologize. Thanks for being considerate though :).

And glad you and R.E. found something useful in my criticism. I was worried it might be construed as not-too-constructive :)
 
i really like this survey... i'll post any questions i think would be useful to add if i come up with any
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
Tronica, I wanted to address your point about who should be allowed/encouraged to vote. I say the only link(s) to this poll should be on Bluelight, but that anyone who finds this link on Bluelight should be encouraged to vote, from founding member to onetime lurker. This gives us the most representative slice of all English speaking people on the net who have an interest in what Bluelight is all about.
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That's fine - it can just be about Bluelight. My point is that even if you only advertise the link on Bluelight, other people who aren't Bluelighters may end up completing the survey unless you have some kind of filter question. Something like 'Which of the following options best describes your relationship with bluelight.ru?' - mod/admin, bluelighter, greenlighter, lurker, (or whatever categories you like) with the last option being 'I have never used Bluelight'. that way you can filter out anyone who hasn't used Bluelight from your sample. or if your software permits, if people click that option, the survey can provide a notice stopping them from proceeding because they don't fit the target group (bluelight users + readers).

If you haven't already done so, look at using Google Analytics so you know where people are coming from to get to the survey. This will alert you to any links outside your control to the survey from other websites.
 
I took the survey, it said only two people had completed it thus far.
 
Tronica, I'm not familiar with Google Analytics (I'm a luddite, shame on me.) But I'll look into it. Thanks.

Wiggi, you're soon to be joined by many more, hopefully.

Thank you Raw Evil, for making this come together. You're a gentleman and a scholar. I was the brains but you were the brawn.
 
I did it; thanks for the opportunity. Just wondering, how did you create your definitions for drug classes? Interesting idea to ask people to base their answers on how the drugs feels for them (rather than what drug it was 'sold' as).

Google Analytics needs to be set up before you go live. So it might be something to look at in your next survey. Basically, you sign up for an account (google "Google Analytics"!) and paste the link on the first page of your survey, in the html code, and then Google tracks how people get to your survey - which websites 'refer' them, which corner of the globe people are coming from, how long they stay on the site, etc.

Apart from standard descriptives, do you have other plans for how you will analyse the data?

You should get some of the admins to put links to this survey in other parts of BL, if you haven't already :)
 
Tronica said:
I did it; thanks for the opportunity. Just wondering, how did you create your definitions for drug classes? Interesting idea to ask people to base their answers on how the drugs feels for them (rather than what drug it was 'sold' as).
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The categories were simply pulled from MDAO's posts in the original idea thread. I looked them over and couldn't see any obvious flaws with them so that's what I used.

Google Analytics needs to be set up before you go live. So it might be something to look at in your next survey. Basically, you sign up for an account (google "Google Analytics"!) and paste the link on the first page of your survey, in the html code, and then Google tracks how people get to your survey - which websites 'refer' them, which corner of the globe people are coming from, how long they stay on the site, etc.
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I have LimeSurvey set to record "HTTP Referer" (the misspelling is actually in the HTTP spec), but yes, GA would have been a good idea. If I run another I'll definitely set it up.

Apart from standard descriptives, do you have other plans for how you will analyse the data?
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Not yet, but I'll start looking at things. I happen to work at a company that makes a very flexible data-analytics tool (which happens to be the program I'm working on) which could easily be harnessed to get some interesting statistics.
 
Sounds good, Raw_Evil! I just think it's great to see a research project get off the ground with these kinds of beginnings... rather than coming 'from the researchers'.

And I think that has something to do with why the survey is so 'painless' - the questions aren't forced at all like they can be when the survey writers aren't themselves part of the target population.
 
Enjoyed the survey, although I think there should have been an option for other types of drug use. For example, I have used amphetamines and benzodiazepines before, but neither recreationally or spiritually. I used them for things like preventing or inducing sleep.
 
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