You wake up in the morning with a splitting headache, extreme nausea, and overall lousy feeling from a night out partying. You later find out that you have contracted a very unpleasant STD as a result of your night’s decisions to drink excessively. Sounds like a worst day ever. If only you had just done ecstasy instead. According to Association of MDMA/ecstasy and other substance use with self-reported sexually transmitted diseases among college-aged adults: A national study, consumption of alcohol leads to higher rates of STDs than the use of this powerful drug. The objective of this study was to concentrate and examine the correlation between the use of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine which is commonly called ecstasy or MDMA, and STD rates. This study, based on surveys, accounted for several factors and reported on all of them along with making numerous inferences from the data on possible links between these factors and STDs. The main goals of this experiment were to analyze any association between MDMA usage and STD rates, explore the odds of lifetime STDs with increased substance use, and lastly, to compare college students’ STD rates compared to non-students.
This experiment was done using an interesting method. It is called a “cross-sectional data analysis of a national survey” (Wu, L). It used data from the 2005-2006 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health, which is a yearly survey that is used by several industries to assess the use of substance and health status of the American population. This is completely anonymous, and asks questions regarding all types of health issues. It uses two different methods of gathering the information, computer-assisted personal interviewing and audio computer-assisted self-interviewing. This survey usually polls around 68,000 people, of which 20,858 were used for this study. This is the number of people ranging in age from 18-22, the general ages of college students.
For an experiment that appears to just be asking questions and making inferences from the answers, a lot more care was taken to reduce any error of any kind. It took into account several variables. The first of these is defining what this study classifies as a sexually transmitted disease and when it was received. This experiment categorizes STDs just as chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes and syphilis. For the sake of this experiment, they excluded HIV/AIDS from the stats, mainly because their research shows that people in the 18-22 age group had less than 1% who reported having it. They also tried to find out if the participants had been diagnosed with the disease within the last year or much earlier in life. This was in hopes of gathering further data to make more accurate assumptions for results. Other variables considered were involving social characteristics and demographics. These include “age group, gender, race/ethnicity, college-attending status (college students vs non-students) and total annual family income” (Wu, L). One of the last variables this article clarifies which drugs in particular were studied. Along with ecstasy, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine/crack and methamphetamine were also accounted for and analyzed. After all the data was collected, the researchers evaluated it using a system called “SUDAAN – software designed specifically for statistical analyses of data from complex surveys” (Wu, L). By using this method, several different comparisons could be made easily.
The results found in this study were quite interesting. The first question the researchers were trying to answer was did the use of MDMA increase the chances of contracting an STD. They had hypothesized that this might be true because the use of ecstasy, along with other drugs, leads to an “increase in sexual arousal and also promotes unprotected/risky sexual behaviours” (Wu, L). However, the data from this lab disagrees with this theory. It showed that participants who admitted to using ecstasy were not more likely to receive an STD. Although MDMA did not increase the percentage, alcohol and marijuana usage did seem to have a much more dramatic impact on STD rates. The next question they faced was did substance use increase the lifetime chances of contracting an STD. The scientists concluded from the data that for both college students and non-students, “alcohol use, marijuana use, femail gender and African American race increase the odds of both past-year and lifetime STDs” (Wu, L). This proves that substance usage can lead to an increase chance of getting a STD, however not MDMA particularly. The last question was to compare student vs non-student STD rates. From this survey, “2.1% of college students and 2.5 % of non-students reported contracting an STD in the past year” (Wu L). These are so close that it can be assumed that the variable of student versus non-student does not affect STD rates. These are the results and conclusions made on the three main questions the researchers were hoping to answer. In general, that main this that affected STD rates were being female, African American, or having a history of alcohol use.
Though this study was done as accurately as possible, there are still several areas where error could have occurred. The first is that this cross-sectional nature of the data requires sever inferences to be made in order to make conclusions. Second, all the data collected was based on self-reports, leading to several areas of error, including lying, memory errors and also lack of knowledge by the participants. A third source of limitations comes from the inability to distinguish between different types of STDs that were reported. The last source of error comes from the failure to consider the homeless and active military personnel in the study. However, even with all these restraints, the data collected from this survey is still very useful in drawing conclusions about STDs, substance use, and student status.
This simple yet extensive survey and research has given a large amount of valuable data and statistics that can be used to determine important facts about the relationship between numerous substances, especially ecstasy, and how they affect STD rates. However, the main conclusion that can be derived from this data is that alcohol, not MDMA, is the biggest link to increased STD rates and that regardless of student-status, young women and African Americans have the highest levels of STDs.
STD awareness is very prominent in the UNC- Chapel hill student health program. They do their best to inform sexually active people of the dangers and also do all they can to prevent STDs by distributing condoms. They also run ads around campus to advise all students of the possible threats. However, even with all this work done, it is still up to the students to be responsible for our actions, regardless of circumstances.
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