Critical Appraisal of Evidence on Drug Use Among Music Festival Attendees

HLSC122 Semester 1, 2019
Assessment 3
Student Name and ID number
Assessment title- Critical appraisal of evidence
Word count: 1200

Part A
Introduction
Use of drug is a serious concern and it requires education and awareness in order to
reduce the uses of drugs. People, attending music festivals are more likely to abuse drugs and
various articles are there that discuss this matter. Here, in this paper, the critical appraisal of a
similar kind of research article will be illustrated addressing some important points.
Authorship
The authors were involved in designing the study and all of them contributed to the
drafting of the study. The authors are associated with the Harm Reduction and Health
Promotion programs. They work with north coast public health, mid north coast local health
district of NSW, Australia. They are also associated with the school of medicine and
university of western Sydney. Again, their direct association with school of public health,
Sydney medical school, university of Sydney and university centre for rural health is highly
significant. Their qualification and affiliations to these universities proves that they are highly
eligible for this research to be conducted. The authors also declared that they have no
competing interests. However, they might be biased with the indigenous Australian people
and not mentioned the issue of culture difference throughout their research paper (Day et al.,
2018, p.7).
Research questions, aim/hypothesis
The main aim of the research paper is to increasing understanding of attitudes as well
as behaviours towards the drug checking services among any musical festive patrons. This
study is the first study according to authors that is based at a music festival to survey the drug

use of the attendees. The author justified that it will also provide some valuable knowledge to
contribute to some ongoing debates related to drug testing (p.2).
Research design
A cross-sectional survey was conducted and in order to address the main research
aim, the author clearly justified that the survey content as well as the structure was guided by
some previous research that focuses on drug, alcohol, health promotion, public health, and
others. The research design helps in gaining knowledge about drug testing and other concerns
stated in the research hypothesis (p.2).
Research methods
A quantitative research method was used and to the drug users, one open-ended
question was asked. Two waves of pilot-testing of the survey were conducted and the sample
size was 10 and 12 respectively. All of them were representing the target audience.
Participants of 18-30 years completed the paper-based survey and placed their opinions to a
closed-box in order to maintain the confidentiality (p.3). Participants were also given a short
summary about the drug checking method and its importance. In the survey, the total
numbers of participants were 642. In order to analyze data, SPSS version 22 was used. Chi
square tests were also conducted to verify the association between different variables. The
open-ended questions were thematically coded to analyze the data accurately. The main
strength of the quantitative research method is that the findings can be generalized if the
sample is the representative of the study population. Also, data can be consistent and reliable
which are easy to analyze as well (Creswell & Creswell, 2017). However, this research
method cannot produce robust data to explain any complex methods (Creswell & Creswell,
2017).