Online Survey for Australian Injecting Drug Users

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cqscott

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Joined
Jan 13, 2011
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19
Location
Rockhampton
My name is Scott Hinton. I am currently doing a study as part of my Masters of Clinical Psychology degree through CQUniversity examining some of the personality characteristics of injecting drug users. The survey is entirely anonymous and results are securely stored. You must live in Australia, be over 18 years of age to participate, and have injected a drug for non-medical reasons within the past 12 months. The survey takes about 10 - 15 minutes to complete and all those who complete have the chance of going into the draw to win an Apple iPod Touch 8GB. A full information sheet will be provided when you open the questionnaire link below. Please click on the link below or copy it to your web browser.

WHO: Injecting drug users 18 years of age or older who live in Australia.

WHAT: Examining injecting drug users, impulsivity, and dependence.

WHEN: Now.

WHY: To develop ways of reducing the harms associated with injecting drugs

HOW LONG: 10 - 15 minutes.

WHERE: Link removed by researcher. Survey is closed.

Thank you
Scott Hinton
Principal Researcher
 
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Hi again. If you live in Queensland, Australia, and access clean injecting equipment through the Needle and Syringe Program (NSP), you may notice my study being advertised there as well. The NSP worker may even mention it to you. Certain NSP's have hard copies of the participant Information Sheet and questionnaire for distribution. If you have already completed the survey online, please do not complete a hard copy questionnaire as well. However, if you have not yet completed an online survey, please feel free to complete the questionnaire either in hard copy and hand it back to your NSP worker or complete it online. All responses are greatly appreciated and remember, there is the chance of winning an iPod!
 
It has come to my attention that some people are concerned they need to provide their contact details in order to participate in this study.

Please note: YOU DO NOT NEED TO PROVIDE YOU CONTACT DETAILS to participate. Your participation can be anonymous. Contact details are only needed if you would like to receive a summary of the research results or if you want to go into the draw to win an iPod.
 
Thank you to all who have completed a survey to date. Greatly appreciated. At this stage, I have until the end of September to collect data, so anybody else who would like to complete a questionnaire, please do. Remember, by completing the questionniare, you can opt to go into the draw to win an iPod %)
 
Hey Scott, how are you going with recruitment? Colleagues and I were talking about how it would be good to put a business card with a survey URL inside Fit Packs to reach people who are injecting drugs. (This has been done before in Australia and was quite successful.) Otherwise it can be hard to reach this population if you want to access people outside the treatment setting. So I wondered whether you were having success with online methods?
 
Tronica said:
Hey Scott, how are you going with recruitment? Colleagues and I were talking about how it would be good to put a business card with a survey URL inside Fit Packs to reach people who are injecting drugs. (This has been done before in Australia and was quite successful.) Otherwise it can be hard to reach this population if you want to access people outside the treatment setting. So I wondered whether you were having success with online methods?
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Hi Tronica
Recruitment is fairly slow and your idea of putting a business card into fit packs is a really great (and cheap) one. I wish I had thought of that and am wondering if I would need ethics committee approval to change my advertisement strategy in that way? I think I will contact them and find out. I still have until the end of September to collect data, but with the combination of online and hard-copy questionnaires, I do currently have enough to undertake the statistical analyses that I had planned (i.e., t-tests) and to get a thesis together, but I would like more to improve the power of my analyses and will likely make an application to the ethics committee for extension in a bid to get the numbers I want. Thanks for your interests and ideas.

Scott
 
Yeah that's the trouble... Ethics committees have their place but they make it harder to introduce new ideas half way through!
Another one is contacting any local drug user organisation you might have and getting them to advertise it in their publications?
Like you say, as long as you have enough to do some analysis, you should be OK - when getting a thesis, the markers understand these practical concerns are difficult to avoid.
 
Thanks for your comments Tron. I have had a number of discussions with my supervisor about the sample size issue and she continues to remind me that examiners are not only interested in a big n. As you would know, they are also interested in the research design, data analysis methods, etc. Further, this is 'only' a Masters thesis, not a PhD and she keeps bringing me back to 'simplicity'. Thesis aside though, I do want to get a publication (or two) out of this and my lack of experience in this may be wrong, but I think the larger the sample size the better because peer reviewers will not be so kind as thesis examiners lol. So, this is what will drive me to make an application for extension and addition of advertisement strategies. If approved, the extra data will obviously not be used in my thesis, but will find its way into the results section of a publication. I'll let you know how I go with the ethics.

P.S. How are things with your PhD. All written up yet?
 
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I found the questions really interesting. I look forward to reading the results. Good luck with your research.
 
Filled the survey out, though if you only had until the end of september I may be a day late :p

Good luck with the thesis!
 
i filled this out at an NSP in Qld, Scott. my hometown is an hour south of where you live, so i presume you know of the toxic town;) i've spent time in rockhampton as well.

i look forward to reading your thesis. will you be publicising it in here?
 
I'm just about ready to wrap up data collection Crankinit, but your responses made it in. Greatly appreciated. :D
 
disposition said:
i filled this out at an NSP in Qld, Scott. my hometown is an hour south of where you live, so i presume you know of the toxic town;) i've spent time in rockhampton as well.
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Won't be eating the fish from there any time soon ;)

disposition said:
i look forward to reading your thesis. will you be publicising it in here?
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I will post a summary of the results here for interested individuals as well as to those who indicated that they wanted a summary. I also hope to publish the results in a journal sometime next year. I really appreciate you taking the time disposition. :D
 
Hey Scott

I did the survey the other week. One point - you didnt really have any options for sporadic users like myself. I dont do it daily - probably once a month. Survey seemed tailored to regular users. Just wanting to raise the point with you

All the best on your survey. I hope you keep us posted on the results. Love studies!!

Minxxxy
 
minxxxy said:
One point - you didnt really have any options for sporadic users like myself.
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Thanks for raising this point minxxxy. Within a questionnaire, it can be really hard to accurately capture someone's pattern of injecting without asking lots of questions. My study is not directly focused on how often someone injects, so I decided to only include two questions about frequency of injecting. In doing so though, I end up not being able to accurately identify how often someone is injecting. Thanks for helping out and I will definitely be keeping people posted on the results.
 
cqscott said:
Won't be eating the fish from there any time soon ;)
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i don't blame you. there are fish and chip shops here advertising they're getting their fish in from yeppoon. there's a stinkup between the no fishing zone they're going ahead within the harbour where all the dredging is going on to accommodate for the LNG plant on Curtis Island but that's not for this thread;)

I will post a summary of the results here for interested individuals as well as to those who indicated that they wanted a summary. I also hope to publish the results in a journal sometime next year. I really appreciate you taking the time disposition.
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i'm definitely interested in the results and look forward to them! good luck with your journal as well:) anytime, mate.
 
I never got to complete the survey, sorry. I am, however, extremely interested in your findings. Looking forward to seeing the published results, as promised above.

Cheers.
 
in my opinion this could go one of 2 ways-i personaly think its a great iear and could increase results, or on the other hand most habitual users realy dont care about participating in surveys that dont directly benefit themselves. This is from personal experience and is in no way directed at people i dont know from situations and backgrounds i dont know.
 
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