Queen’s Psychology students seeking young adults to participate in study
Two Master of Science (MSc) candidates in the cognitive neurosciences program within the Department of Psychology at Queen’s University launched a study in May to investigate alcohol and cannabis use during the pandemic in their study demographic.
Michelle Blumberg and Lindsay Lo noticed that the current COVID-19 climate were having a noteworthy effect on day-to-day substance use patterns among young adults.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the ways in which we go about our day-to-day lives,” Blumberg told Kingstonist. “In just a short period of time, office and schoolwork became ‘work from home’, going to the gym became living room workouts and socializing became zoom sessions with friends and family.”
“As graduate students who are always looking for new research opportunities, we thought why not conduct a study to empirically investigate this,” she continued. “Therefore, at the beginning of May we began to design a survey study to investigate alcohol and cannabis use in young adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The study consists of a series of short questionnaires regarding substance use patterns before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Questions regarding socio-demographic and other important information will help classify the data collected. The survey takes approximately 15-20 minutes to complete and participants have the opportunity to provide their email address at the end to be entered in a draw to win 1 of 10 Amazon or Starbucks gift cards valued at $25 each.
Young adults between the ages of 19 and 30 who are interested in participating on this study can do so at this anonymous link: https://queensu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6W3e6KPSb4083wF?fbclid=IwAR0AETiqUf5SSZAsdQeMU2h5m0LaIIHV9iBuSTMVB2wRTMKkqsE1SdXNpKA.
“We wanted to reach out through Kingstonist to reach a broader demographic,” Blumberg explained. “This is extremely important to us as our goal is to obtain an accurate picture of substance use among individuals between 19 and 30 years of age.”
“We hope that our study will allow us to gain a better understanding of the factors that are associated with substance use in young adults,” she continued. “In turn, we believe that this may help inform useful interventions for substance use in the near future.”