The substance of youth - the place of drugs in young people's lives today

By Perri 6, Ben Jupp, Helen Perry and Kristen Lasky, November 1997

Appendix 1: Research hypotheses, methods, problems and analyses

Our central research question was whether the values and attitudes of young recreational users of drugs - for example, their fears, worries, sense of place and outlook on life - are significantly similar to or different from those of young non-users, and to see how they compare with those of problem users.[69] The research used five working hypotheses, drawn from popular perceptions of those who use drugs, to help structure the interviews.

The first hypothesis is that drug use is correlated with weak ties to and trust in families, but that drug users tend to have a strong sense of being part of - or pushed by - the activities of a peer group. This disposition lies behind resistance training programmes such as the United States project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education). Likewise, a paper prepared for the Home Office describes one of the risk factors for drug taking as an 'inability to resist peer pressure [and] favouring one's friends' opinions about drugs over parents and other adults.'[70]

The second hypothesis is that young drug users have less respect and trust in authority than non-users. The same Home Office paper concluded that 'there is consistent evidence that toungsters who use drugs tend to be generally anti-establishment, sometimes anti-social and to have friends who use drugs'.

The third hypothesis is that young people who use drugs seek risk and excitement to a greater extent than young non-users. This is implied in the association of drugs with all-night raves and the energy-inducing nature of some drugs such as speed and ecstasy, as well as the health risks of taking any drug.

The fourth hypothesis holds that drug use is correlated with young people's sense of fatalism or optimism. Low self-esteem has frequently been suggested as a reason for drug use. As a 22-year-old non-user of drugs whom we interviewed expressed it:

With a lot of others, drug taking comes from insecurity. My closest friend - the most insecure of my friends - has tried quite a lot. I put it down to insecurity, being a bit unstable or something.

According to the hypothesis, such suggested insecurity and low hope is expressed in a sense of fatalism. Drugs are used for escape.

The final hypothesis examines young people's sense of the morality of drug use and the place of drugs in society. According to this hypothesis young recreational drug users have a different sense of what activities are moral, and of their own sense of place in society. This view is implicit in, for example, Silbereisen and colleagues' comments on the correlation between failure to find work and increased use of drugs. They suggest 'lack of employment increased substance abuse through its stressful impact (but perhaps also in making it more likely that the young people would form part of a deviant subculture) (emphasis added).[71]

Given the sample size of the populations interviewed, the research cannot aim definitively to answer all these questions about young people's drug use and attitudes, but rather it is intended to explore these working hypotheses, in order to generate new directions for future larger-scale research and to tease out some important implications for policy design.

Method
The hypotheses were investigated using focus groups and semi-structured interviews with just over one hundred young people and by analysing 854 young people's reponses to a survey of people's outlooks and drug use.

Qualitative information was collected through group discussions, followed by individual interviews with young problem, recreational and non-users of drugs in four parts of the country. We specifically selected those who never took drugs or took them less than twice a year; these were classified as non-users. We also selected those who took drugs on average at least once every two weeks; these were classed as recreational users. Problem users were designated as those using a drugs agency in order to help them control or reduce the harm that drugs were causing them.

Groups of non-users and recreational drug users aged between 16 and 25 were recruited by MORI in Kingston (Surrey), Wythenshawe (Manchester), various parts of Yorkshire, and Brighton.[72] Each group comprised of between seven and twelve young people, moderated by at least one of the two field researchers. In many of the groups there were two or more participants who knew each other. Both researchers were present at many of the group interviews, in order that each had contact with the maximum possible number of respondents. Group interviews were semi-structured and lasted around one-and-a-half hours. The group interviews were tape-recorded and significant remarks transcribed.

Problem drug users were recruited by the researchers themselves, from different types of drug advisory and drop-in centres. All the problem users we spoke to used either heroin or methadone, often in combination with other drugs. In Kingston, users were recruited from Kaleidoscope, a drop-in and social centre offering advisory services, some training programmes, needle exchange and a methadone programme. In Manchester, problem users were recruited from the Wythenshawe estate's New Start centre. New Start is a centre with links to the probation service, offering a drop-in facility and needle exchange. In Leeds, problem users were recruited from Bramley Community Centre - a centre which offers users a drop-in facility, advice and a needle-exchange. The centre is also used by other groups for community activities, such as a senior citizens' history society.

In Kingston, Manchester and Leeds, efforts were made to recruit problem users from drug centres run by the voluntary sector, as these tend to have a more informal atmosphere and generally find it easier to accommodate outside researchers. But it also proved useful to get a feel for how different sorts of drug services are run. In Brighton, where there is a noticeable lack of larger voluntary agencies anyway, problem users were recruited from the NHS drugs service centre. The Brighton drugs service is housed in its own facilities and offers various programmes of methadone prescription and counselling at the centre we visited.

Group interviews with non-users, recreational users and problem users were followed by individual semi-structured, in-depth interviews with participants, conducted with one researcher. The questionnaire for individual interview was structured to uncover a large amount of information about the personal lives, experiences and outlooks of the interviewee in both qualitative and quantitative form, in order to gather information which is easily compared between cases. Some questions were open-ended, leaving space for the interviewee to talk about their family, friends, social life and expectations in a personalised, unstructured way. Other questions offered a more structured selection of answers from which interviewees must choose their response. Before, during and after the interview, interviewees were encouraged to refer to anything they felt to be relevant, and probed to give detail to their answers to the more structured questions. Each interview lasted between one and two hours.

Group and individual interviews were conducted from February to April 1997. One hundred and ten people participated in group interviews and 101 people were interviewed individually. In addition to group and in-depth interviews with young people, we also spoke to some doctors, community workers, drugs counsellors, social workers and local residents. The results were analysed using partial transcription of focus groups and interviews, and frequency and correlation analysis of the answers to structured questions.

The second element of the research analysed data collected for Synergy Consulting - a company which helps businesses understand the underlying values, beliefs and motivations of their customers.

Synergy asks a sample of 5,000 British people between the ages of 15 and 75 more than 200 questions which measure degrees of interest in, empathy for and identification with a range of issues and sentiments. The sample is representative of the socio-economic mix of the United Kingdom and drawn from all parts of the country. Typical Synergy questions ask the respondent to indicate their degree of agreement with statements such as "we have a lot to learn from the cultures and values of other lands" or "you're either healthy or not; there's not much you can do about it". The questions are chosen on the basis of those issues which have been found to elicit representative expressions of values in focus group work and previous surveys.

Synergy uses the term 'value' in its widest sense, to include people's broad outlook on life. For example, 'value' can refer to people's sense of 'ease' or 'resignation' and the activities they enjoy and see as important, as well as evaluating their personal priorities and moral sentiments. To determine attachment to a particular value, such as strong authority, or moral puritanism, the answers to a number of questions are grouped together into a specific value index.[73]

Synergy also asks respondents whether they have ever taken any illegal drugs. We compared the values and outlooks of the entire population, the 854 respondents aged between 15 and 24 years, and the 39 per cent of those respondents between 15 and 24 who reported that they had ever tried an illicit drug.[74] Of the 39 per cent who had ever tried an illicit drug, 95 per cent had tried cannabis, 46 per cent speed/amphetamines, 23 per cent ecstasy, 23 per cent magic mushrooms, 21 per cent LSD, and 8 per cent a 'hard' drug (desrcibed as 'hard' in the questionnaire). These figures indicate that the vast majority of the sample could not be categorised as problem drug users.

The value indexes are constructed so that about one-third of the entire population usually scores more than seven out of ten in each value index. The proportion of specific population groups (such as those aged between 15 and 24) scoring above seven out of ten in a given value index indicates the relative strength of attachment to a given outlook. We use these proportions only to indicate relative attachment. Absolute levels of each outlook were probed in the focus groups and interviews. Appendix 2 gives more details on Synergy's methods.

Research problems
This study presents and relies on a substantial amount of information collected from interviews with young people. Three main problems were encountered. The first was that some participants in the group interviews were unable to attend an individual interview. The interviewers therefore recruited some additional participants in each of the areas, including a few (6) from other parts of London for the Kingston research.

The second problem was that the age profile of problem users was somewhat different from that of non- and recreational users, and three-quarters of them were men. Most were in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, with only 40 per cent of responders under 25. However, problem drug users visiting drug agencies do tend to be older and male.[75] It was felt the research required a representative sample of problem users and their life histories. This means that not all of the attitudinal information gathered from problem users is strictly comparable to that from recreational and non-users.

Like all qualitative research into sensitive topics, we have to assume that participants 'dodged' some issues or failed to give a completely candid description of their views. By questioning interviewees in both groups and individually we witnessed their responses in different environments, which tends to highlight inconsistencies. Further, because interviewees often belonged to a social group from whom one or more other participants were drawn, we could compare different people's descriptions of the same behaviours or events. The fact that, broadly, 'stories matched', indicates that respondents were as informative in substance as they appeared forthcoming.