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What stakeholders have an interest in the research findings on substance abuse?

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Substance Abuse

Consider the possible stakeholders for your research project. Who are they?
What social, political, or personal factors might influence the direction of your research?
What interest groups would be involved?
What patterns might influence the direction of your research?
What are the possible policy implications of your research?
Provide some examples of policies that might result from your research.

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The stakeholders who have interest in the research findings on substance abuse are determined. The interest groups who would be involved is determined.

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Hello! Please see the attached file.

Hello and welcome to Brain Mass today! You logged in and asked for guidance with several questions concerning your research project on substance abuse.

Unfortunately per Brain Mass policy, I cannot provide the answer to these for you. However, I will be happy to provide some guidance and suggestions so that when you go to formulate your responses for your paper, you will have what you need to do so. Let us look at the first question now together:
•Consider the possible stakeholders for your research project. Who are they?

This is a very good question! There are a number of agencies, institutions, and individuals who interact as stakeholders within a community for a substance abuse program. Depending how and where your research is being used, these stakeholders are categorized into several different groups including support services such as AA or counseling agencies, regulators such as law enforcement or law makers, professional organizations such as The Substance Abuse Task Force or local medical facilities, community leaders, school boards, and even the general public. Anyone who has an interest in substance abuse and solutions to the problem can be considered a stakeholder. For this question, I suggest looking into your community (if you focused your research on local resources) to find specific stakeholders within your area. Almost everyone has local branches of AA and policy makers in government who have a high stake in substance abuse research.

•What social, political, or personal factors might influence the direction of your research?
Nationwide, policymaking agencies such as the Federal Government will greatly influence the direction of your research depending on the funding that they will give you to complete your study. They will also escalating pressure on you to prove your hypothesis, implement evidence-based practices, and your commitment to find solutions that work. As for personal factors, unfortunately your vision may not actually work out as you get deeper into research, and you may be forced to take a different path than you originally planned in order to prove your hypothesis so this would greatly influence the direction of your research. As for social, you may experience a cultural gap in which you run into difficulty conveying simple messages to a sample population included in your research which would alter your research and may make it inconclusive. Also, you may start to run into difficulties with methodology especially if policy makers are involved. The more complex and sophisticated their policy expectations are, the more difficult your task of completing your research will become. And finally, you may run out of funding and/or resources to aid your project which would either end your project or have you making alternative plans for your research.

Factors Affecting Research 'Influence' - A Literature Review. Found May 30, 2013: http://www.ddrn.dk/filer/forum/File/Literature_Review_N_Perkins.pdf

•What interest groups would be involved?
Again, this varies from local communities. I am sure that you have some wonderful special interests groups available in your area. I did some research for you and tried to list a few that may help:
• Substance Abuse Task Force
• Alcohol Anonymous
• DARE
• Local law enforcement
• Grant Holders who are funding your research
• Local Hospital Research Institutions
• The National Association of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counselors

•What patterns might influence the direction of your research?
The one common thing that you want to look for when you are researching to identify themes, patterns, or threads that are common across participants. These themes, patterns, or threads are what will help you transform your research data into facts that will prove your hypothesis and prove what you set out to. "Patterns demonstrate a recurring theme, with data or objects appearing in a predictable manner. Seeing a visual representation of the data is usually enough for us to recognize a pattern. However, it is much harder to see patterns in raw data, so identifying patterns can be a daunting task when we face large volumes of research data" (Baty, 2009).
So when you researched substance abuse, what did you find? Did you notice a trend among users or a pattern that repeated itself? If so, how did this influence your research? Not having the benefit of reading your paper, I cannot help you find this specific information. However, this should be something easy for you to spot. I assume that you will find a pattern among a certain demographic (age, race, socioeconomical situations) that determines high-risk substance abusers.

Baty, Steve. (2009). Patterns in UX Research. Found May 30, 2013:
http://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/02/patterns-in-ux-research.php

•What are the possible policy implications of your research?
As you know, a policy implication is something suggested or inferred in a policy. With research on substance abuse, some policy implications that you can focus on economic and social threats that substance abuse poses to households, neighborhoods, and the community at large. You can also focus policy implications on possible medical treatment for the addicts as well as support for his/her family members.

•Provide some examples of policies that might result from your research.
This is also a very good question. Many good policies have come from substance abuse research including substance abuse policies in schools and colleges, substance abuse policies in the workplace, zero tolerance policies. Here is an example of one that I found for you from Worksafecenter.com.

SUBSTANCE ABUSE PROGRAM

I. STATEMENT OF POLICY

(Date)__________________

In a commitment to safeguard the health of our employees and to provide a safe environment for everyone, has established a drug-free workplace policy.

The ultimate goal of this policy is to balance our respect for individual privacy with our need to keep a safe, productive, drug-free environment. We would like to encourage those who use illegal drugs or abuse ...

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