Pubdate: Mon, 15 Feb 2016
Source: Alaska Dispatch News (AK)
Copyright: 2016 Alaska Dispatch Publishing
Contact:  http://www.adn.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/18
Note: Anchorage Daily News until July '14
Author: Laurel Andrews

SURVEY EXPLORES HOW ALASKANS FEEL ABOUT POT -- IF MOST ALASKANS WERE 
WHITE AND OVER 50

Hoping to track how Alaskans use and perceive marijuana, the state 
health department has begun taking annual surveys -- but with the 
first results published this month, some professionals are raising a 
red flag about the study's findings.

Alaska legalized the recreational use of marijuana in November 2014. 
With the shifting landscape, marijuana use and perceptions will 
likely change, the State of Alaska's section of epidemiology writes.

The survey, released Feb. 1, is the starting point for tracking those 
changes. But is the data reliable?

"There are just so many points that we could pick out and say 'this 
is a problem,' that I don't know where to start ... As it stands, I 
would put very little credence on the survey," said retired 
statistics professor Don Stevens, who worked at Oregon State 
University and the University of Alaska Anchorage, and who now lives 
in Wasilla.

The survey asked 750 Alaskans a series of questions about marijuana 
use, Alaska's marijuana laws and about their beliefs on the risks of 
using cannabis.

Among the findings:

22 percent of respondents identified as current marijuana users. 
Those users overwhelmingly chose to smoke the plant, and 60 percent 
had consumed within the last 30 days.

Knowledge of Alaska's marijuana laws varied: More than 90 percent of 
respondents knew a person could be arrested for driving high; only 20 
percent knew Alaskans could legally grow up to six plants for personal use.

Seventy percent of respondents felt that daily use by teenagers was 
very harmful, while 37 percent felt the same way about daily use by 
adults. A majority of people, 56 percent, were "highly concerned" 
about young children eating edibles on accident; only 32 percent had 
the same worries about adults and adolescents.

However, most of the people surveyed were older, white Alaskans. 
About 65 percent were older than 50 and 83 percent were white. 
Seventy-six percent of those surveyed had an annual household income 
of $50,000 or more.

"That in itself would be enough to raise a huge red flag," Stevens said.

The state agrees that the demographics aren't ideal. "They don't seem 
to represent Alaska as a whole," said Yuri Springer, an epidemic 
intelligence service officer for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control 
and Prevention who wrote the bulletin, but did not help to create the survey.

Matt Berman, a professor of economics at the University of Anchorage 
Alaska's Institute of Social and Economic Research, agreed.

To have a representative sample, "According to census data ... only 
39 percent should have been over 50," he said. "Also, 83 percent 
white is quite a bit higher than the state population, which is about 
64 percent non-Hispanic white."

Does the over-representation of older Caucasians skew the results?

"I don't know, you'd have to do another survey," Springer said.

Apples to Apples

Hays Research Group conducted the survey over the course of four days 
in early May 2015.

The study cost $30,000, pulled from the division's federal funding, 
according to Springer. Next year, the Alaska Mental Health Trust 
Authority will fund the study.

The resulting demographics aren't surprising, said research director Adam Hays.

"Sometimes you have to do one survey to find out what variables to 
account for in the next one," he said. "Ideally we'd have a little 
better scope for the demographics."

Still, "I think it is relevant," Hays said of the data.

One reason for the demographic leanings may be the method of calling 
- -- 80 percent of phone calls were to landlines. Only 20 percent were 
made to cellphones, a ratio chosen by the state and based on another 
national phone survey, Springer wrote.

Hays said he would "advise (the state) to increase the number of 
cellphones," to get responses from a younger and more diverse group, 
although he noted cellphones are more expensive to call.

After the interview, Hays called back to say "for that survey we 
basically followed the directions to the tee ... (The state) 
specified what they wanted and we did it."

This survey will be used to compare behavior from year to year. So 
can the state make an accurate comparison with this starting point?

"It should be highly accurate if you survey the same population," 
Springer said.

Hays said that despite the demographics, the responses can be 
weighted to give an accurate picture of behavior going forward: "You 
can compare apples to apples," he said.

Weighting is a tool used in market research to make up for 
demographic discrepancies, which gives individual responses more or 
less "weight" to align with the actual known makeup of a population. 
"That's not uncommon at all," Hays said.

Yet weighting may not fix the problem, according to both Berman and 
Stevens, as it can bring more errors into play.

'Statistically reliable'?

If there is a low response rate -- meaning the number of people who 
took the survey were a small percentage of people they tried to 
contact -- the survey may not paint an accurate picture of Alaskans' 
beliefs around marijuana, Berman wrote.

Hays calculated the response rate at 34 percent. Both Stevens and 
Berman, using a different calculation, arrived at just over 5 percent.

There are different ways to factor that rate, according to Hays, but 
Stevens said he'd "never seen it done (Hays') way before."

"They have misrepresented their response rate," Stevens said.

Berman believes that going forward, it will be difficult to compare 
this year's survey to future studies.

"I do not think (the) results ... could be considered statistically 
reliable," Berman wrote.

UAA statistics professor, Rieken Venema, disagreed. "Numerous studies 
have found that the response rate in and of itself is not a good 
measure of survey quality," he wrote in an email. Most biases can be 
corrected with weighting, he wrote.

For the state's part, Springer said that, "I really don't see that 
that's a huge issue ... in terms of comparability" to next year's 
study. He noted a 2012 study by Pew Research Center found 9 percent 
response rates are common and can still provide accurate data.

It's also difficult to generalize whether weighting and response 
rates will be problematic, Springer said, as "it really is dependent 
on the context."

For next year, Springer said the state will "apply lessons learned" 
to modify the survey. The state will add new questions to distinguish 
between medical and recreational marijuana, he wrote.

In terms of demographics, "We'll work to address those issues in 
subsequent surveys," Springer added.

Stevens said that "there is some potential for salvaging (the 
survey), but there are certainly things I think they need to look closely at."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom