As a person goes from child to teen they are faced with many changes and choices. One big decision teens often have to make is weather or not to try drugs there are many different factors which can influence this decision. On a good note the department of health took a survey related to drug use. The survey was spread nation wide to 394 schools, and found that drug use is on a decline. Drug abuse has gone down in numbers which helps authority, parents and schools keep kids away from using drugs.
The article that produced these results above was called "Just Said No" which was published December 17, 2002. 43,000 students participated in the nation wide experiment. The results found that amongst teens drug use has gone down and for eighth graders its been the lowest since 1993 and for sophomores since 1995. 2 The which this study tested were ecstasy , lsd, nicotine, alcohol and marijuana. The only negative findings were that heroin, cocaine remained the same while and crack and sedatives went up in numbers.
In this kind of research a survey is best used, but its validity often makes the results questionable. A survey is best used in these kinds of studies because it is able to cover a huge sample and develop results quickly and efficiently. When researchers are looking at teens as a whole they cant just look at one teen because it could just end up being that one teen who has a bad drug problem or one community which ends up with certain results. One question which may question its validity is the quality of the questions asked on the survey. If the questions were perhaps asked very poorly making the subject confused it might through the answer which is put down they might have meant something else. From personal experience observing other take surveys, teens seem to not like taking them seriously. For example teens might answer to try to be funny or impress peers around them. Teens also might get nervous or scared that others might see the results thinking what if my mom sees these results I could get in trouble this would cause them to alter the results of the test causing them to give the end result poor validity.