Music festival attendees’ illicit drug use, knowledge, and practices regarding drug content and purity: a cross-sectional survey

Running head: ARTICLE ANALYSIS 1
Day, N., Criss, J., Griffiths, B., Gujral, S. K., & John-Leader, F. (2018). Music festival
attendees’ illicit drug use, knowledge, and practices regarding drug content and purity: a
cross-sectional survey. Harm Reduction Journal, 15(1).
Student’s Name
University

ARTICLE ANALYSIS 2
Introduction
The drug testing debate has been going in Australia for some time with different people holding
varying views on the topic. Some authors have suggested that testing will reduce the level of
intake of drugs while others view it as a rubber stamp mechanism that will be used to justify the
reason why drugs need to be taken. The study by Day, Criss, Griffiths, Gujral, & John-Leader
(2018) has been criticized by Emilly’s mother, she argues that drug testing acts as a rubber stamp
for her child to engage in legalized drug taking, thus the reason why she did not want her
daughter to attend the festival.
PART A – Critical appraisal
Authorship
From the author's profile, we can see that they are qualified and have the authority to discuss the
research topic since they have experience in the field and have published several research articles
on the topic. They are medical researchers and publishers who have a vast interest in the topic
and the issues that revolve around it. The authors did not report any possible conflict of interest
which may create bias for the study.
Research questions
The main focus of the study was to investigate the patterns of illicit drug use, attitudes towards
testing and the impact that this has on the behavior of young people attending festivals. In
research, a good research question is supposed to reflect the aim of the study and make it easy
for the reader to identify the variables of the study that are to be measured. By looking at the
research question, the reader is supposed to easily identify the aims of the study and the expected
outcomes. The significance of this study was determining the effectiveness of drug testing in
music festivals and other public activities and its role in reducing drug use in young people (Day,

ARTICLE ANALYSIS 3
Criss, Griffiths, Gujral & John-Leader, 2018). Most studies that have been done on this topic
have focused entirely on harm reduction by monitoring specific drugs but have failed to propose
alternative ways for reducing drug use. Thus this gap has been identified by this study and this is
why the authors propose the need for drug testing during music festivals for the youth to make
decisions on whether to use the drug or not.
Research Design
The study was based on the survey method since it is the best design for reaching out to a large
number of respondents and describing different characteristics of the population. The survey
method makes it easy to reach out to a large number of people with varying demographics (Saris
& Revilla, 2015). This allows the collection of quantitative data by measuring the attitudes,
views, and opinions of the respondents on a specific topic.
Research methods
The basic method of collecting information in a survey is a questionnaire with a set of questions
for the respondents. These questions are designed on a Likert scale that measures the different
attitudes, opinions, and views of the respondents. On a scale of different levels of the agreement,
the respondents are supposed to pick the level that best described their response to the question
asked (Weathington, Cunningham & Pittenger, 2015). This method is the best since it allows the
researcher to reach out to a large number of people while at the same time gathering quantitative
data that is easy to analyze and present the findings (Donald & White, 2014). Sometimes,
questionnaires have been criticized from the fact that the researcher has no way of verifying data
collected from the responses and this means that even though the data collected may be invalid,
the researcher is forced to use this information to draw conclusions which compromises the
whole study. Participants for the study were recruited based on the required age for participation