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

This essay involves the critical appraisal of the article, where a survey is conducted among the attendees of the music festival. The relevance between the case study and that of the study of the article has been evaluated.

Running Head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
NURSING ASSIGNEMNT
Student name:
Student number:
HLSC122 Semester 1, 2019
Assessment 3: Critical appraisal of evidence
Word count:

1NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Full reference
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
Drug usage is extremely common among the teenager and young adults. In order to
reduce the harm done by this illicit drugs, drugs testing is conducted. Drug testing is usually
conducted to reduce the harm caused by the illicit drugs such as, cannabis. Marijuana and
ecstasy. This essay involves the critical appraisal of the article, where a survey is conducted
among the attendees of the music festival (Dry et al., 2018). In this essay, the authorship,
research design, research methods, result and limitation of the article is discussed. The chosen
case study in this essay is of Emily, who is going to attend a music festival where drug testing
has been conducted, hence in this essay, relevance between the case study and that of the study
of the article has been evaluated.
PART A – Critical appraisal
Authorship
Authorship is defined as the state of being a writer of the article, document, creator or the
book, the work of the art. There are total 7 authors involved in this article Niamh Day, Joshua
Criss, Benjamin Griffiths, shireen Kaur Gujral and Sabrina pit are from the school of medicine.
Franklin John- leader is involved in the harm reduction and health promotion programs and
Jennifer Johnston is from the school of public health (Day et al., 2018). As most of the authors
Student name/student number

2NURSING ASSIGNMENT
involved in this article possess expertise in the field of medicine, they can observe the result
obtained from the study. The authors based on their qualification and expertise can analyses the
paper more precisely and in detail.
Research questions:
In this study, the authors clearly mentioned the research question and the aim of this
study is clearly mentioned the research aim in the background section of this study. The study
aimed to find the proportions and nature of the illicit drug use among the young people and
simultaneously, their attitudes towards the drug use and the effect6 of the drugs on the young
users are also clearly mentioned in this study. In addition to this, the authors also analyzed the
behavior of the children while using the drug is also discussed in this study by Day et al. (2018).
Research design
Cross sectional research method was used in this study. In this study, a population was
selected and then an observational study was conducted among the selected population group for
this study within a specific period of time (Sedgwick, 2014). In this study, the youth population
group was selected as sample and after collecting data a descriptive study was performed to find
the correlation in between factors.
Research methods
In this study, a survey was constructed and the survey was used to collect the data. In this
study almost 642 participants were included from the music festivals of Australia within the age
group of 18 years to 30 years (Day et al., 2018). The structured survey contains questions
regarding the use of drugs, purity of drugs, attitude toward drug use by the users, demographic
factors. All the survey questions are open ended that help the researchers to find the actual
Student name/student number

3NURSING ASSIGNMENT
intentions of the participants of this study. The use of open ended questions will allow the
respondents to answer freely as well (Krosnick, 2018). The data collection process was
conducted over two days and the participants completed the paper based survey was completed
by the participants of this study. All the participants were recruited to the study as per the age
group of the participants and this enhances the reliability of the study as this will allow the
researchers to analyze and compare the study result, in a group wise manner in terms of age
group. In the paper based survey the respondents were kept anonymous and this also encouraged
the respondents to complete the survey freely (Nardi, 2018). After collecting the data, they were
analyzed by using SPSS version 22 software.
Results and limitations
From the research article it was seen that two-third of the population present in the music
festival happening in Melbourne were in between the age of 18 to 35 and half of them had
consumed illicit drug once in their entire lifetime and from the research it was seen that two
major class of drug were most commonly used and consumed by the young people present that
includes cannabis and ecstasy (Day et al., 2018). The idea of drug checking had helped a large
population of people in understanding the harmful component present in the drug that would
have a harmful effect on them and help them to avoid such drugs in future (Butterfield et al.,
2016). The research article had two major limitation that was using only female participants in
the survey knowing the fact that females consume less amount of drug when compared to men
and the second limitation was that the survey was based on the consumption of drug by the
young people in their entire lifetime.
Student name/student number

4NURSING ASSIGNMENT
PART B – Application of evidence to practice
From the case study it was evident that the concept of drug checking was not known to
many people as Emily’s mother also had a misconception on drug checking. She believed that
going to music festival would instigate Emily to consume illicit drug (Sage, 2016). She did not
know that drug checking can also help Emily to understand the harmful components of drugs and
can act as a health promotion strategy. In the research article it was evident that drug checking
had a positive impact on the young population and the population got to know regarding the
components of drugs and were aware that they will avoid consumption of such drugs. The article
also focused on the high rate of drug consumption in music festivals and the concept of young
people in consuming drugs. As Emily was young her mother was tensed and did not wanted her
to go the music festival as the prevalence rate of illicit drug consumption is high in such
festivals. Drug checking will help Emily to gain knowledge regarding the illicit drug and how it
can lead to long-term bad health condition and affect her overall health (Karamouzian et al.,
2018). Hence, drug checking will allow Emily and other young people to gain knowledge and
understanding of the drug, the harmful chemicals or agents involved in making drugs and the
effect of drugs on their health disturbing their physical and psychological stability and therefore
forcing the mind of young people to consume more drugs and in turn get addictive to certain
drugs. Therefore the overall research article and the case study was highlighting the concept of
drugs and the positive aspect of drug checking that will help the young people to understand and
gain knowledge regarding the drug use and the kind if knowledge it provides to the young people
(Mema et al., 2018).
Conclusion
Student name/student number

5NURSING ASSIGNMENT
From the overall essay it can be concluded that the research article had provided a detail
insight regarding the positive aspect of drug checking and the knowledge gained by the young
people regarding the consumption of drug and the harmful effects the drug has on human body.
The article had two separate parts were the first part focused on the critical appraisal of the
research paper and the second part focused on the relevance of the research paper in Emily, who
was going to visit the music festival happening in Melbourne but her mother did not want her to
go as she had to go through drug checking. The idea that drug checking would also has a positive
impact on the mind of the young people as it would allow them to have knowledge on the
concept of drug and the effect drug has on the human body.
Student name/student number

6NURSING ASSIGNMENT
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.
Karamouzian, M., Dohoo, C., Forsting, S., McNeil, R., Kerr, T., & Lysyshyn, M. (2018).
Evaluation of a fentanyl drug checking service for clients of a supervised injection
facility, Vancouver, Canada. Harm reduction journal, 15(1), 46.
Krosnick, J. A. (2018). Questionnaire design. In The Palgrave Handbook of Survey
Research (pp. 439-455). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Mema, S. C., Sage, C., Xu, Y., Tupper, K. W., Ziemianowicz, D., McCrae, K., ... & Corneil, T.
(2018). Drug checking at an electronic dance music festival during the public health
overdose emergency in British Columbia. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 109(5-6),
740-744.
Nardi, P. M. (2018). Doing survey research: A guide to quantitative methods. Routledge.
Sage, C. (2016). Harm reduction and drug checking; a wrap-around service for festivals. Case
Study: Shambhala Music Festival.
Sedgwick, P. (2014). Cross sectional studies: advantages and disadvantages. Bmj, 348, g2276.
Student name/student number

7NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Student name/student number