New research by Curtin University has examined the misreporting of data surrounding illicit drug use in Australia, finding true participation rates are more likely to be about twice as high as the initial figures suggest.<\/p>\n
Paper author Professor Mark Harris, from Curtin\u2019s School of Economics and Finance, said researchers were often faced with extremely low recorded participation rates when trying to model, or explain, social \u2018bads\u2019 such as illicit drug use.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people will have incentives to under-report their consumption including a fear of being caught, stigma and moral concerns, so it\u2019s not sensible to look at raw numbers and assume they accurately represent what\u2019s going on in the population,\u201d Professor Harris said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the case of illegal drug use in Australia, the reported participation rates of 12.2, 3.2 and 1.3 per cent for marijuana, amphetamines and cocaine respectively, mask true participation rates which are estimated to be almost double for marijuana (23 per cent), and more than double for amphetamines (8 per cent) and cocaine (5 per cent).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe estimated chances that a user would misreport their participation is a staggering 65 per cent for cocaine, 31 per cent for marijuana and 17 per cent for amphetamines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Professor Harris said inaccurate estimates of the prevalence of certain behaviours could lead to significant implications if the data was used as a basis for policy making or funding allocation.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe widespread use of data collected from individual and household level surveys by researchers and policy makers is clearly reliant on respondents supplying accurate and reliable information,\u201d Professor Harris said.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor this research, we assessed survey participants\u2019 individual reporting behaviour gleaned from answers to unrelated questions and used this information to calculate the likelihood that their zero answer genuinely represented non-participation, deliberate misrepresentation (lying) or infrequent participation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is apparent that the shortcomings of this type of data should therefore be well understood in order to make appropriate policy or health funding decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
This research was conducted in collaboration with the University of Sheffield, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and the University of Exeter.<\/p>\n
Funding for the research was provided by the Australian Research Council and the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre.<\/p>\n