Hone Liana S E, Almog Shahar, Masterson Abigail P, Berry Meredith S
Department of Health Education and Behavior, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA.
Subst Use Misuse. 2025;60(3):335-344. doi: 10.1080/10826084.2024.2427170. Epub 2024 Dec 15.
The use of crowdsourcing for addiction research has increased exponentially in recent years, but the extent to which the populations we expect results to generalize to might be engaging in substance use while participating in remote research has not been formally quantified. Understanding rates of day-of-study substance use on crowdsourcing platforms may be especially relevant given immediately recent use can alter cognitive and behavioral decision-making processes (e.g., attention, behavioral economic drug purchase tasks) that are often the focus of online substance use research.
The purpose of this study is to (1) characterize rates of substance use (i.e., alcohol, cannabis, or both) among 790 Prolific workers on the day of the study, within the past three hours, and since starting the study; (2) provide sample demographic descriptive statistics, typical substance use patterns, and their associations with day-of use; and (3) evaluate whether day-of use is associated with time taken to complete the study and performance on attention checks.
Day-of use was greater than 10%, primarily consisted of cannabis use, and several general use patterns were associated with day-of use (e.g., past year binge drinking was associated with day-of cannabis use). Day-of use was not associated with longer study completion times; attention check analyses were inconclusive.
Considering these results, we provide suggestions for best practices when crowdsourcing data for addiction research and advocate for future studies that use naturalistic experiments to complement laboratory drug- and alcohol-administration studies.
近年来，众包在成瘾研究中的应用呈指数级增长，但在参与远程研究时，我们期望研究结果能够推广适用的人群中，有多少人可能正在使用药物，这一点尚未得到正式量化。鉴于近期使用药物会改变认知和行为决策过程（例如注意力、行为经济学药物购买任务），而这些往往是在线药物使用研究的重点，了解众包平台上研究当天的药物使用发生率可能尤为重要。
本研究的目的是：（1）描述790名Prolific平台工作人员在研究当天、过去三小时内以及自开始研究以来的药物使用发生率（即酒精、大麻或两者皆有）；（2）提供样本人口统计学描述性统计数据、典型的药物使用模式及其与研究当天使用情况的关联；（3）评估研究当天的药物使用是否与完成研究所需时间以及注意力检查的表现相关。
研究当天的药物使用率超过10%，主要是大麻使用，并且几种一般使用模式与研究当天的使用情况相关（例如，过去一年的暴饮与研究当天的大麻使用相关）。研究当天的药物使用与更长的研究完成时间无关；注意力检查分析结果尚无定论。
考虑到这些结果，我们为成瘾研究众包数据时的最佳实践提供了建议，并提倡未来开展使用自然实验来补充实验室药物和酒精给药研究的研究。
