Although I’m not a huge fan of talking about results that are “marginally” significant, the correlation between education and drug use was close, but in the opposite direction from what you predicted (i.e., a negative correlation rather than a positive one). I was wondering how you would address this in your discussion in light of your hypotheses and the prior research you cited.

Interesting project! I found your results intriguing, as I had believed lower SES status to be related to an increase in drug use. I wonder if your results are because people with “real” problems typically avoid self-reporting issues.

Thank you so much for sharing. I have seen quite a few studies in which the participants are hesitant to report true results due to social expectations or stigma. Your study may be affected by this as drug use and socioeconomic status can be sensitive subjects for some people. I this is further support by the fact that not every participant completely filled out the survey. I honestly feel like the results could go either way. Lower socioeconomic status could be linked to substance use as coping mechanism, and higher socioeconomic status could be linked because of the ability to afford such products. Regardless, well done.

I agree with some of the previous comments that i would have thought that socioeconomic status would be related to more drug use. You cited one finding in your intro linking alcohol with higher socioeconomic status but did you find anything else linking SES to substance abuse? I feel like you would find literature linking substance abuse more broadly to lower SES. Does the class of the substance matter here?

Great job on your poster! I was surprised by the results that the data was not significant. I wonder if that could have been due to having college students as the population. I thought your study was really interesting and thought you guys did a great job!

Great job on your poster! This was a very interesting topic; I had previously thought that they would be related. I agree that the limitations in your study may have compromised your results. A lot of people with a substance abuse problem probably struggle to answer honestly in a self-reported survey. Well done!

What an intriguing topic!
I was fairly surprised by the results of the study since I would have thought that substance abuse and socioeconomic status were connected. As some of the other comments have mentioned, I do think it is possible that those with substance abuse problems chose not to participate or have answered dishonestly.

This is such an interesting topic. I would have assumed that socioeconomic status and substance abuse would have been connected rather significantly. I think it might be interesting to study ethnicity and trauma and substance abuse as coping mechanisms. I do agree that the small sample might’ve compromised results. Overall, great job!

This was an interesting study! The results that there was no significance between substance use and socioeconomic status were fascinating. I would love to see what would have been found if there was higher power. Great job!

Awesome poster! I thought that substance abuse and socioeconomic status were related somehow, but the results were completely the opposite than I expected. You all did a great job! Thank you!

Very interesting topic! I am sort of surprised at the result because been though people use substances as a coping mechanism I thought it would be significantly used in lower socioeconomic. I also believe that it could be hard to believe in the results when it comes to the questioners because some people might have answered dishonestly. Great Job again!

This is a great topic! I was surprised by your results–I’ve always heard that socioeconomic status and substance use are related, and that lower SES is typically linked with higher rates of substance use. I appreciated your discussion of potential limitations. I’d be interested to see more research on this, maybe with a different age group or a measure that isn’t self-reported to see if either of those things impact the results. Great job!

I loved the topic! I was definitely shocked by the results. I was always told that having a higher socioeconomic status could decrease the chances of developing substance use disorders. But it was very interesting to learn that is not always true.

I really enjoyed this study. I was so surprised by the results. I really would’ve thought that there would be a negative association between substance use and socioeconomic status. I am really curious to know if there would be more of an association had there been a larger sample size and was open more to the public instead of just the student body of Mary Washington.

Great job on this study. Do you think it could be beneficial for future research to focus on specific substances used and the likelihood of their use when considering socioeconomic status?

Nice study! I thought this was a very interesting topic. One thing I noticed about the survey questions was that when asking about income, they asked what participants made personally, not what their parents made. Around the college age, young adults are still largely reliant on their parents financially. Do you think if the survey also asked about their parents income there would have been different results?

Very interesting topic. I think this area of study should be expanded upon further, in order to truly examine the relationship between substance use and socioeconomic status. In my opinion, the internal validity of the study was a bit low, however. The operationalization of your variables needed to be more thorough. For example, instead of using a forced-choice style for your question regarding income level, you could use a variety of question styles (perhaps Likert or open-ended), to dig deeper into the participant’s income level. However, I liked the utilization of the DAST, and I think the use of regression for your analysis was the right choice.

This was a very interesting topic! I think this is definitely a type of study that could be conducted more in depth with a bigger participant pool. Something that I did notice with the limitations is the demographics. Was location also a major role in potential substance abuse towards the participants? Was there a lack of diversity that may have impacted your data? I think this is definitely something that future researchers who are interested in replicating this study can look more in depth.

What an interesting experiment! The goal of the experiment was to attempt to see if socioeconomic standing correlated with substance abuse. This was done by using a survey. Within the survey, you asked the participants their economic standing and then asked their amount of drug usage. This would then correlate the answer of whether the income has to do with the number of drugs or alcohol use within those groups. The hypothesis was that people of lower socioeconomic beliefs would have lower drug use, but the results proved otherwise. I find the original hypothesis to be quite intriguing because I would believe the opposing theory, that the higher the socioeconomic standing the less substance abuse would be occurring. Due to the fact that drugs and alcohol usage is usually correlated with poverty. Poverty is defined as lower income regardless of education level because some people with higher levels of education could be in a competitive job market. I also feel like it is not as frowned upon by lower-income jobs which also typically correlates with lower socioeconomic standards. Which the more important jobs tend to drug test and the appearance associated with jobs with higher socioeconomic standings. I am also very interested in how you came to the original hypothesis.