Is Inclusion of a Dummy Drug Necessary for Estimating Perceived Prevalence of Substance Use by Classmates?

Substance abuse among students is a worldwide concern. As a widely applied method, nominative technique is employed to estimate the prevalence of a specific behavior among a population by questioning informed people.

The current study aimed at examining the necessity of including a dummy drug (i.e., relevin) in the list of drugs that are requested via nominative technique.
Patients and

Totally, 12 schools were selected using a stratified cluster sampling method in Kerman city, Southeastern Iran, and all their grade 10 students were recruited in the current study. A well-validated questionnaire was also used to ask students about the frequency of using six substances among their classmates, in addition to the items associated with risk-taking tendency and self-report substance use by themselves. To analyze the data chi-square, Cramer’s V, multiple logistic regression tests was used.

The mean age of the students recruited in the current study was 16.2 ± 0.6 years (n = 830) and approximately 53% of them were female. The consumption of relevin by classmates was reported higher in females (10.2%) than males (6.1%), in urban areas (10.6%) than rural ones (4.0%), and in subjects with a higher tendency toward substance abuse (17.6%) (P < 0.05). The belief in the use of relevin by classmates was not correlated with perceived use of any drugs by classmates. Frequency of self-reported substance use in subjects choosing the use of relevin by classmates was also comparable to those who did not declare the use of relevin by classmates.

It was concluded that there might be no need for the inclusion of a dummy drug as an indicator of reliability to the list of substances that are being asked of students in the nominative technique