Laboratory studies
- Aim to investigate the effects of drugs on mental and physical processes
- Data gained is used to further understanding of the nature of a psychoactive drug
- Objective, quantitative measurements – brain scans
- Behavioural measurements – speed of reaction times, accuracy in completing cognitive tasks
- Qualitative measurements – reports of the experience collected by participants
- Many laboratory studies use participants who are regular drug users – many are addicts
- Aim to understand the mechanisms of addiction, tolerance, and withdrawal
- Often the first stage of developing programmes to treat substance misuse
- Comer 1997 – laboratory based token economy system to reduce drug taking in heroin addicts
Evaluation
- Qualitative data – reporting how a drug makes participants feel
- Well controlled environment – drug quantities and measurable effects can be seen as objective and reliable
- Gives a clearer idea on the effect of drugs on human performance compared with animal studies
- Best way to systematically investigate the effects of a drug as all other factors are held constant
- Allows a better understanding of the mechanisms of dependence, tolerance, and withdrawal, as mechanisms may be different in other species and field studies have too many uncontrolled variables
- Impossible to know if qualitative data is reliable – what one participant means by a description may not be the same as what someone else means
- Very different environment to a social situation – experience is very different – reduced validity
- Some laboratory experiments have laid participants open to addiction – people now used in modern research are already addicted
- Possible that the responses of an addict to a drug may be very different from those of a non-drug user – generalisation may be invalid
Surveys
- Interviews or questionnaires
- Often part of a longitudinal design – follow a group of people over time in order to understand the nature of dependency and addiction
- Questions may focus on possible causes of addiction
- Used to investigate attitudes towards treating addiction , rates of relapse, or recovery
- Start by interviewing parents – move onto interviews with parents and children – as they move into adulthood, focus entirely on the child
Evaluation
- High ecological validity
- Researchers can ask about long term effects, experiences, or causes – great deal of depth in information
- Questionnaires – sample can be very large – conclusions drawn have a better chance of being relevant to the wider population
- Qualitative data on respondent’s perceptions provides a rich source of information
- Large-scale questionnaires rely on mail-shots – tend to produce a bias sample – results may not be representative of wider population
- People aren’t always honest – socially desirable answers – embarrassment
- Past experiences may be inaccurate if collected many years later
- Participants followed over many years to avoid forgetting, drop-out rates, and intervening events may create distortions in data collected