Critical Appraisal of Evidence on Music Festival Attendees’ Illicit Drug Use

Running head: CRITICAL EVALUATION
Title
Student name:
Student number:
HLSC122 Semester 1, 2019
Assessment 3: Critical appraisal of evidence
Word count:

1CRITICAL EVALUATION
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.
Introduction
Critical appraisal or evaluation is a part of evidence based practice which
involved systematic evaluation of strength and weakness in a research paper
and make judgment on appropriateness of research design used to address the
research question (Smith, 2015). This essay is based on the case scenario of
Emily, who is attending a music festival in Melbourne and her mother has heart
that drug testing is done in such events. The main question for her mother is
whether drug testing encourages young people to use illicit drugs at such
festivals or not. Hence, the main purpose of the essay is to critically appraise the
research paper on music festival attendee’s illicit drug use and practices towards
it and comment on its application to the case scenario.
PART A – Critical appraisal
Authorship
Authorship is a critical factor that defines the credibility, affiliation and
expertise of author in particular field of research and this helps to determine the
value and clinical significance of research paper for particular field of practice.
Authorship detail is given in research papers to convey about credibility and
validity of the research paper (Kassis, 2017). The study by Day et al. (2018) also
gave details regarding authorship of the papers. The journal article had six
authors and majority of them had affiliations in the school of Medicine and
University Centre for Rural Health. One of the authors also had affiliation in Harm

2CRITICAL EVALUATION
Reduction and Health promotion program thus demonstrating expertise in health
promotion work for people with harmful health behavior. Hence, these affiliation
suggest the majority of authors have experience in the field of medicine and
they can propose useful harm reduction strategies for illicit drug use among
teenagers. Therefore, the possibility of credible data is high for the research
article based on author’s expertise and affiliation.
Research questions
A good research question is one which has clear and focused research
variables and which clearly defines the purpose of conducting research (O'Leary,
2018). Day et al. (2018) was based on clear and focused research question
which was to investigate on patterns of illicit drug use among young people,
investigate about attitude towards drug checking at festivals and evaluate its
impact on intention to use illicit drugs. Hence, important information related to
illicit drug use can be gained through this research.
Research design
The research paper used cross sectional research design by investigation
about illicit drug use from music festival attendees for two weeks period using
survey method. A cross sectional research design is a type of research which is
used to investigate about a phenomenon in particular population group for
particular time. The advantage of using this research method is that it helps to
address research question in much less time and in a cost effective manner. Very
large population data is not required. In addition, this research design is also
helpful to investigate about exposure or outcome in relevant time (Salazar et al.,
2015). Hence, cross sectional research design is appropriate to get idea
regarding patterns of illicit drug use among teenagers and the perception of
teenagers towards drug testing.