Why use a survey?
Surveys are a good way to discern the general knowledge, opinions, or ideas of the public about any topic that the conductor of the survey chooses. In the process of trying to deepen my research of my topic, I conducted a survey to get a better understanding of what the people around me know about the opioid crisis.
The goal of my survey:
The goal of my survey was to find out the different ranges of knowledge that our society has on opioids and our country’s epidemic. Some of the questions were formulated more broadly to help me understand if people knew the basics- like what opioids are, and what substances are classified as opioids. Other questions were more specific to the epidemic, questioning the severity of the opioid crisis and the reasons for it. Most of the questionnaire was fact based, but I threw in two opinion based questions to deter people from using the internet to look up the answers.
What was the procedure like?
While beginning to work on my survey a couple of weeks ago, I pondered how I could get a sample size that was large and diverse enough to be a good representation of my data. Originally, I was going to stand in front of the SFSU library and hand out the survey, but I reasoned that if I was getting all of the results from one spot, it would not be diverse enough, and thus create biased answers to the questions. Due to this, I turned to my social media accounts to publicize my survey, which proved to be very effective because my sample size ended up being 116 participants. I began the survey with two questions regarding the demographics of the participants in the survey. This gave me a better idea of what types of people were answering the questions, and also provided insight to any bias that might have skewed my results. The demographic questions that were presented inquired about the age and location of each participant. After the demographic questions, four survey questions were asked, two of which were fact based, and two of which were opinion based. The fact based questions were: “which of the following groups of substances are classified as opioids?”, and “around how many people died from an opioid overdose last year?” The opinion based questions were: “do you think our country has a problem with opioid abuse?”, and “in your opinion, what drives the opioid epidemic in our country?”
What were the findings of the survey?
The data showed that the participants were 116 people who were almost all from different parts of California, but the other states included were Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, Kentucky, Alabama, Texas, Rhode Island, Washington, and Idaho. The ages of the participants ranged from 17 to 64 years old, but the majority of the participants were 18 to 23 years old.
From that data regarding the first fact based question on classifying opioids, I can draw the conclusion that the majority of people know what opioids are and how they are classified, because 87.9% of the sample size answered correctly. On the contrary, the other 12% were uncertain of the difference between opioids and other drugs that aren’t in the same category.
The second fact based question on the survey which asked how many people died from an overdose last year conveyed shocking results. Only 55.2% of the people in the survey knew the correct answer, meaning that 45% of people had no idea how widespread the epidemic actually is.
One question inquired the opinions of the participants, asking them if they thought our country has a problem with opioid abuse. The majority of people (94%) answered that yes, we do have a problem. On the other hand, 6% of people answered that they did not think we have a problem with opioid abuse.
The last question in the series asked the participants opinion on what drives the opioid epidemic in our country. This question, as I predicted, had data that was spread more evenly across the five options: 6.9 %answered homelessness and poverty, 10.3% answered the government trying to get people hooked, 25.9% answered doctors’ failure of tapering regimens, 26.7 % answered the government’s failure to properly regulate, and 30.2%of people answered that it was due to doctors prescribing too many opioids.
Author’s analysis of the results:
While analyzing my data, I realized that the participants knew some of the general information about opioids and our epidemic, but they did not have a solid understanding about two of the most important questions which ultimately considered the magnitude of the epidemic. For the question that asked the participants’ opinion on if we have a problem with opioid abuse in our country, 94% of the people answered no, but that means 6% of people don’t think we have a problem. This really surprised me to find out that there are people out there who don’t think our country has a problem, because I predicted that 100% of the people would know that we do in fact have a problem. Although this information surprised me, it also left me wanting to find a way to spread more awareness of the issue so that the 94% of informed people can reach its full potential at 100%. The factual question about how many casualties there were from opioid overdose last year was incorrectly answered by almost half of the sample. Almost half of the sample chose an answer that was much less than the real number, which means that that portion of the sample is not informed, and underestimated how strong the epidemic has proven to be. Overall, the data that I collected from the survey led me to believe that people are familiar with the opioid epidemic, but aren’t aware of how severe it actually is.
