Critical Assessment of Evidence on Illicit Drug Use in Music Festivals

This article critically appraises the research study on illicit drug use in music festivals and related knowledge and practice. It discusses the authors, research questions, research design, research methods, results, and limitations of the study. It also discusses the application of evidence-based practice related to this article.

Running head: CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF EVIDENCE
CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF EVIDENCE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note:

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Introduction
Drug use in music festival has become very common practice around the globe and
Australia is no exception to this scenario (Mohr et al., 2018). This has led to the very severe
consequences as people died in the music festival due to the overdose of the drug. Due to this
reason, the illicit drug use in the music festival has become a very major issue in the health
care industry of Australian government (Butterfield et al., 2016). For instance, in a recent
music festival in New South Wales, it has been reported that one person aged 19 years old
has died due to the illicit drug use (Gotsis, 2019). Not only that, three more people were
hospitalised in a critical condition due to the drug overdose in the same music festival. In
addition to that, thirteen more people required to be hospitalised due to illicit drug use and
one hundred thirty more people required medical treatment owing to the same reason (Gotsis,
2019). Hence, it can be said that the drug use in music festival have very serious
consequences and the incidence rate of this incident is growing day by day.
Therefore, the purpose of this article is to critically appraise article related to illicit
drug use in the music festival and related knowledge and practice. The article that will be
appraised in this essay is “Music festival attendees’ illicit drug use, knowledge and practices
regarding drug content and purity: a cross-sectional survey” by Day et al. (2018). This critical
appraisal will be conducted in two part. In Part A, critical appraisal of this article will be
conducted and on the other hand, application of evidence practice related to this article will
be covered in the Part B.
Part A – Critical Appraisal

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Authorship
The authors of this research study are Niamh Day, Joshua Criss, Benjamin Griffiths,
Shireen Kaur Gujral, Franklin John-Leader, Jennifer Johnston, and Sabrina Pit. Among them,
Sabrina Pit is the corresponding author of this research study. Sabrina Pit is renowned
academics in her area of research. She has more than 60 publication to her name and with
almost 1400 citations in those articles (Google Scholar, 2019). Her being associated with this
article has increased the credibility and reliability of this article. In addition to this, the article
has been published in a journal with 5 year impact factor of 2.726 (Harm Reduction Journal,
2019). Therefore, combining all these factors together, it can be deduced that the paper is
quite reliable and valid.
Research Questions, aim or hypothesis
The aim of this study was to enhance the knowledge and comprehension about the
behaviour and attitudes towards the use of drug checking in the music festivals. This one of
the first study which has conducted a survey about drug checking services among the
attendees in a music festival in the Australian continent. The ultimate goal of this study was
to provide a better understanding of about current debate regarding drug checking services in
music festival (Day et al., 2018).
To evaluate the above mentioned aim, the authors have posed two research questions.
The first one is about the attendees perception and attitudes for the drug checking services in
music festival and second question is determine the reason about the lack of inquisitives
regarding drug content and purity (Day et al., 2018).
Research Design
The research design that was employed in this by Day et al. (2018) is semi- structured
survey method. In this research design both quantitative and open ended questionnaire were

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provided. Among them quantitative survey method was the predominant one. The quantitative
questionnaire was analysed using the SPSS software for determining the associations between the
categorical variables and continuous variables. For this purpose p value less than 0.05 was set as
a threshold value for the data to be statistically significant. On the other hand, the open ended
questions were analysed thematically (Day et al., 2018).
Research Methods
The research method that was followed by the Day et al. (2018) was conducted in three
part. The first of the methods was survey development and outcome measures. In this part
designing of the survey and questionnaire were developed. The next part of the method was
recruitment and data collection. In this context, the authors, Day et al. (2018), have recruited
participants for the survey and the target participants were aged between 18 to 30 years old. In
addition to that data form the survey questionnaire was collected in this stage. The final step was
to data analysis and quantitative data were analysed using SPSS software whereas open ended
questions were analysed thematically.
Results and limitation of the study
In their study, Day et al. (2018) have reported that the almost 75 per cent of the
participant in the music festival have consumed illicit drugs. Most prevalent drugs are ecstasy and
cannabis. They have also showed that the most of the attendees in the music festival believed the
drug checking services will motivate the drug abuser to reduce the use drug and they have also
believe that this drug checking services should come with harm reduction advice. In regard to
drug content and purity, the attendees reported that they will not use drugs which contain
methamphetamine, ketamine, or para- methoxyamphetamine (Day et al., 2018).
The study conducted by Day et al. (2018) has few limitation as well. The first limitation
of this study is the sample size of the survey participants. The participants that were participated
in this research study are not likely to be representative of the general population. Therefore, the

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study findings cannot be generalised towards the overall population. In addition to that, the
attendees of the music festival were predominantly female which is in clear contradiction of the
notion that the male population consume higher percentage of drugs compared to their
counterparts. This analysis also further limits the study findings in regard to the generalizability.
Another limitation of this study was sampling bias. The survey was conducted in a broad daylight
and the attendees who were obviously intoxicated were excluded from the participation of the
survey. Another bias that might be affecting the study’s findings was systematic bias due to the
convenience sampling (Day et al., 2018).
Part B – Application of evidence based practice
The most common application of this evidence based study is the case study scenario
presented in this assignment. In the case study, Emily’s mother is worried about her
daughter’s participation in the music festival as she heard that there will be drug checking
services. In her opinion, she thinks that this encourages young people to partake in illicit drug
abuse. Her belief is totally in opposite to the findings presented by the Day et al. (2018) in
their study. According to the findings, most of the attendees opinionated that they reduce and
limit their consumption of drug if there is a drug checking service in music festival. Therefore, if
there is a drug checking service in the music festival Emily attending, then there is a higher
probability that Emily will restrict herself from partaking in the usage of illicit drugs.
Conclusion
Therefore, in a nutshell, it can be stated that use of illicit drug is common in music
festival in Australia which has occurs in few untimely death. This encourages government to
implement drug checking services in the music festival. Survey conducted to understand the
behaviour and attitude of the attendees in the music festival have reported that almost 75
percent people consume drug in music festival and they are likely to restrict their drug
consumption if there is drug checking services in the music festival.

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References:
Butterfield, R., Barratt, M., Ezard, N., & Day, R. (2016). Drug checking to improve
monitoring of new psychoactive substances in Australia. Medical Journal of
Australia, 204(4), 144-145.
Day, N., Criss, J., Griffiths, B., Gujral, S. K., John-Leader, F., Johnston, J., & Pit, S. (2018).
Music festival attendees’ illicit drug use, knowledge and practices regarding drug
content and purity: a cross-sectional survey. Harm reduction journal, 15(1), 1.
Google Scholar. (2019). Sabrina Pit. Retrieved from https://scholar.google.com/citations?
user=ulGhIwEAAAAJ&hl=en
Gotsis, T. (2019). Drug use at music festivals. Retrieved from
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/researchpapers/Documents/Drug%20use%20at
%20music%20festivals_final.pdf
Harm Reduction Journal. (2019). Harm Reduction Journal. Retrieved from
https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/
Mohr, A. L., Friscia, M., Yeakel, J. K., & Logan, B. K. (2018). Use of synthetic stimulants
and hallucinogens in a cohort of electronic dance music festival attendees. Forensic
science international, 282, 168-178.