Cardiff University, School of Social Sciences, United Kingdom.
School of Public Policy and Department of Criminology, University of Maryland, United States.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2017 Dec 1;181:194-199. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2017.09.027. Epub 2017 Oct 18.
There is significant interest in comparing countries on many different indicators of social problems and policies. Cross-national comparisons of drug prevalence and policies are often hampered by differences in the approach used to reach respondents and the methods used to obtain information in national surveys. The paper explores how much these differences could affect cross-country comparisons.
This study reports prevalence of drug use according to the most recent national household survey and then adjusts estimates as if all national surveys used the same methodology. The analysis focuses on European countries for which the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction reports data, the United States, Canada, and Australia. Adjustment factors are based on US data.
Adjusting for modality differences appears likely to modestly affect the rankings of countries by prevalence, but to an extent that could be important for comparisons. For example, general population surveys suggest that the US had some of the highest cannabis and cocaine prevalence rates circa 2012, but this is partially driven by the use of a modality known to produce higher prevalence estimates. This analysis shows that country rankings are partly an artifact of the mode of interview used in national general population surveys.
Our preliminary efforts suggest that cross-national prevalence comparisons, policy analyses and, other projects such as estimating the global burden of disease could be improved by adjusting estimates from drug use surveys for differences in modality. Research is needed to create more authoritative adjustment factors.
人们对比较不同国家在社会问题和政策方面的诸多指标有着浓厚的兴趣。在进行跨国比较时，由于各国在调查对象的抽样方法和信息收集方法上存在差异，往往会阻碍对毒品流行率和政策的比较。本文探讨了这些差异对跨国比较的影响程度。
本研究根据最近的全国家庭调查报告毒品使用流行率，并在此基础上调整了估计值，假设所有国家调查都采用了相同的方法。分析重点是欧洲监测中心报告数据的欧洲国家、美国、加拿大和澳大利亚。调整因素基于美国的数据。
调整模式差异似乎会适度影响各国流行率的排名，但在比较中可能很重要。例如，一般人群调查表明，美国在 2012 年左右的大麻和可卡因流行率较高，但这部分是由一种已知会产生更高流行率估计的模式造成的。本分析表明，国家排名部分是由于全国一般人群调查中使用的访谈模式造成的。
我们的初步研究表明，通过调整毒品使用调查的模式差异来估计，跨国流行率比较、政策分析和其他项目，如估计全球疾病负担，可以得到改善。需要开展研究来创建更权威的调整因素。
