Writing-up Global Drug Survey 2021 - tell us about your drug use in the crazy year of 2020!

Tronica

Executive Director
Staff member
Joined
Mar 12, 2002
Messages
4,354
Global Drug Survey is back for 2021!

As well as the usual modules that measure your drug use, this year we have some new modules which you can read more about here:
Partying like it’s 2021. How clubs and pubs need to adapt in 2021
Medical cannabis and dependence? Really….give us a break
Microdosing – how do you do it, and what are your experiences?
Sharing spliffs, snorters and drugs – how much of difference has COVID made?
Digital Pleasures: ASMR, binaural beats and other ways to change your brain without drugs

SURVEY LINK:)

Details:
- Study is open now and ends on 31 January 2021. Results will be disseminated publicly June 2021.
- Ethics approvals have been granted by University College London and registered with RMIT University.
- Anyone is in scope to do the survey, even if your recent drug use is low or nil!
- The survey length depends on your history of drug use and which modules you elect do (no questions are 'forced'). 15-30 minutes is normal but some people can take much longer, e.g. up to an hour.
- The survey is anonymous and no payments or incentives are offered. Your data will help GDS continue to develop free harm reduction resources.
- You can contact Dr Monica Barratt (RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia) for more information about Global Drug Survey (or just PM me here @Tronica)
- You can read more about Global Drug Survey, the study and the organisation, which has been doing annual surveys of drugs for 9 years now as GDS and over a decade in total (including surveys in MixMag).

SURVEY LINK:)
 
Last edited:
I'm all for continuing science even if you don't get paid! Go science!

Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, or if this is a comment noting the desire for payment, or... :)

On the issue of payment, perhaps in future the design can be worked out - but for many years, in drugs research using web surveys, we (The researchers) have privileged keeping people anonymous, rather than paying them as this would involve getting contact details from them.
 
Not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, or if this is a comment noting the desire for payment, or... :)

On the issue of payment, perhaps in future the design can be worked out - but for many years, in drugs research using web surveys, we (The researchers) have privileged keeping people anonymous, rather than paying them as this would involve getting contact details from them.

Not sarcastic at all. Every survey or interview I've ever done studying my own drug problems was purely altruistic and never thought of the payment. If I could give my body to science to study why I am the way I am I would. I am all about harm reduction and helping prevent other people from experiencing the problems I have.

IMO compensation should only be provided for anything that takes more than 1 hour to complete.

I love what you do and was not mocking you or your cause in any way. I hope you see this message soon. <3

I'll be honest I've taken a few in person interviews which took about 2-3 hours and in the end they give you a ~$25 giftcard instead of cash. That's fairly condescending and belittling. I get it, though.... I feel a lot better about spending my time answering my questions without being judged. Compensating drug addicts with gift cards instead of cash is........ looking down on them... but that's not what you're doing at all.

Again, I was not being sarcastic, I meant what I said. <3

@Tronica we aren't all empty human beings looking for nothing but that next $20 for our fix.... I'll leave it at that

I love and your work. Believe that.
 
Last edited:
Will absolutely be looking into this today. Bookmarked the page. I'm actually just listening back to the last interview I did another interivew for a study and this is next on the list.
 
Not sarcastic at all. Every survey or interview I've ever done studying my own drug problems was purely altruistic and never thought of the payment. If I could give my body to science to study why I am the way I am I would. I am all about harm reduction and helping prevent other people from experiencing the problems I have.

IMO compensation should only be provided for anything that takes more than 1 hour to complete.

I love what you do and was not mocking you or your cause in any way. I hope you see this message soon. <3

I'll be honest I've taken a few in person interviews which took about 2-3 hours and in the end they give you a ~$25 giftcard instead of cash. That's fairly condescending and belittling. I get it, though.... I feel a lot better about spending my time answering my questions without being judged. Compensating drug addicts with gift cards instead of cash is........ looking down on them... but that's not what you're doing at all.

Again, I was not being sarcastic, I meant what I said. <3

@Tronica we aren't all empty human beings looking for nothing but that next $20 for our fix.... I'll leave it at that

I love and your work. Believe that.
Sorry. Maybe I was just having a crap day. Thanks for the love :)
 
Done. As a mod I feel it's my duty to give back to our community. Even though my using is definitely not what it used to be years ago before I got clean lol. Definitely made the survey shorter despite ticking basically every drug lmao. I'm no longer the human garbage can for drugs
 
Done. And what the heck; gave em my real email address since I’m only gonna have it for a few months more. Besides, all my drug use these days really is legal. Matter if fact, my photo was on the front page of a local newspaper on leglalization day 🤣

Tom
 
Done. And what the heck; gave em my real email address since I’m only gonna have it for a few months more. Besides, all my drug use these days really is legal. Matter if fact, my photo was on the front page of a local newspaper on leglalization day 🤣

Tom
Thanks for your input.

Just a note that the email contact is held in a separate dataset, not connected with any responses to questions. Also, lots of people do the GDS who don't use illegal drugs (we ask other questions sets, e.g. mental health, alcohol, digital pleasures!), so being in that database is not indicating anything about your habits.
 
Cool survey. I'm sure you guys are collecting a lot of interesting information. I had no idea what I was committing to though. I was like 20 minutes and staring down another daunting page of questions when I decided to give up. I was going to save but then upon realizing that they wanted an email address decided to give up. 🤷‍♂️
 
Cool survey. I'm sure you guys are collecting a lot of interesting information. I had no idea what I was committing to though. I was like 20 minutes and staring down another daunting page of questions when I decided to give up. I was going to save but then upon realizing that they wanted an email address decided to give up. 🤷‍♂️
Thanks for the feedback. It's true that if you have a lot of current drug use, the survey can take a while.
We do get a lot of drop out in the survey - we still see the info that you did put in, so, thanks for that. It just means that the modules closer to the end get less love!
I'd assume that being a Bluelighter you'd have some kind of pseudonymous email you use for these kinds of things? I'm not sure how else we would do a save and complete later, as we don't collect IP addresses or use cookies etc. It's tricky getting the balance right here, but yes, I think we do need to get a shorter survey happening.
 
We have closed GDS for this year. It was a lot harder to get folks interested in filling out the survey than in previous years. Survey fatigue? COVID? probably a lot of reasons!
 
Done. And what the heck; gave em my real email address since I’m only gonna have it for a few months more. Besides, all my drug use these days really is legal. Matter if fact, my photo was on the front page of a local newspaper on leglalization day 🤣

Tom
???🤔
 
Top