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University of Tas - Cannabis Research


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Hi guys,

 

I was studying at school today and ran back to my car for a lunch time session. On my way back I came across a poster titled; DO YOU USE CANNABIS? After getting over my initial thoughts of "Shit, how do they know?" I went for a closer look.

 

I didn't read all the info, but I think basically someone is doing some research into cannabis dependency down here and asking for survey participants. After I read a bit on the survey site I figured they prob aren't a "pro dope" study, but nevertheless I still gave them my thoughts.

 

The questions are pretty slanted, but there is a fair opportunity to give some honest answers. Took me about 15 mins to complete

 

Hopefully some others can tell them we are not crazed, cannabis dependent psychotics!

 

goo.gl/MRmNJ is the link

 

Cheers stealth

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The survey certainly had negative connotations however the results will dispel all notions that Cannabis is harmful.

 

...get into physical fights while under the influence of cannabis?

 

Haha.

 

..have a period of a month or more when you spent a lot of time using cannabis or getting over its bad after-effects?

 

I reject the notion that Cannabis has bad after-effects.

 

...find that your usual amount of cannabis had much less effect on you than it once did?

&&

..find that you had to use much more cannabis than you once did to get the effect you wanted?

 

These two questions could, in my circumstance, be misleading. I don't smoke cannabis regularly to get stoned, I smoke it to keep a certain level in my body which keeps me calm. So, if I up the amount to keep me calm and maintain that level, I no longer get stoned and that's the way I like it.

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Hey folks

 

The researcher running this project Dr Bruno Raimondo is a colleague of mine - who just emailed me to see if anyone could drum up some more participants for this project.

 

The short blurb for the project is:

University of Tasmania researchers are looking for people that smoke cannabis to complete an anonymous online survey. The survey asks about the positive and negative effects of smoking cannabis, and general health and wellbeing. It takes around 30 minutes to do and all responses remain confidential. In appreciation for the time taken, at the end of the survey participants can enter a prize draw to WIN 1 of 3 $500 JB HIFI online vouchers. To find out more, head to this link: https://surveys.psyc...x.php?sid=75648 or email the researchers at cuditstudy_2011@yahoo.com.au .

 

I just did the survey myself. As an occasional user I pretty much said no to almost all the questions that were clearly measuring harms that could be associated with cannabis (not just health harms but also legal and financial problems).

 

Some people here might be offended by being asked all about harms. But it's worth saying that as researchers, we can't report stats like 'most Australian cannabis users we surveyed reported no financial harms' or 'no health harms' unless we ask about these harms. So don't assume we think you'll say yes necessarily. Hopefully that makes sense :)

 

I also noticed that Dr Bruno went to great lengths to keep the survey anonymous. The prizes are completely optional, no need to provide any identifying information here.

 

Let me know if you have any feedback and I'll pass it onto Bruno.

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yeah not really impressed with the survey Monica, I pulled out halfway through because they have not done their research properly, eg. "do you smoke bongs or cones?" what the...... additionally, some questions assumed that performing certain actvities while stoned is dangerous, such as swimming.. at that point I decided the questions were definitally skewed to a negative focus therefore i would not complete it. Let Bruno know, next time he does a cannabis survey, he should get someone who knows about cannabis to write the questions
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@puka - sure I will pass any feedback on. Surely bongs/cones go together, right :)

 

Regarding negative skew of questions, the problem is that most measures researchers use are standardised. Sometimes the wording isn't perfect. The point of using those measures is that they are validated and mean the research will be more likely to be published.

 

Though I do think the key is to pilot it so you know what upsets people or puts them off, and try to remove/replace the offending parts of the survey! and also for researchers to include measures of the positives of cannabis use as well.

 

@weedcankillyou - I know Bruno has all the necessary procedures in place to protect the data. The most important of those is to ensure no identifying information is collected in the first place. Universities and our ethics committees take privacy very seriously... so not quite sure what your comment is implying.

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@puka - sure I will pass any feedback on. Surely bongs/cones go together, right :)

yeah bongs and cones do go together, so to ask: if you smoke bongs, joints, cones or vaporizors? doesn't really work. possiblly should have been; bongs, joints, dry pipes or vaporizers?

There was another one on there that just came to mind.. 'In recent times, how many cones do you get from one gram?'

why in recent times? If they want to see how many cones you get out of a gram, why not get them mean volume of a cone, and extrapolate the number of cones that can be packed from one gram.

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I did it. How are we ever going to get cannabis at least decriminalised if we do not do some of these surveys. I think sometimes our community takes things to personally.

 

I thought it was one of the better surveys that I have seen.

 

I have a better understading of reasearch surveys thanks to my son. He was a part time researcher for the Brotherhood of St. Lawerence during his early uni days.

If it was not just put in the dots and we could write an answer, the reasearchers would never complete their reasearching.

 

Another thought: We cannot openly speak about what we do for fear of prosecution, so taking surveys is one small way of getting us closer to one day having the laws changed and the stigma removed.

Edited by brick
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