SURVEY SAYS: DON'T WORRY ABOUT SURVEY

Surveying Grade 5 students about drugs shouldn't have any ill-effects,
according to Statistics Canada.

How does it know? A survey, of course.

Elizabeth Majewski, StatsCan's project manager for Health Canada's survey
of Grade 5 to 9 students about addictive substances, said researchers had
reservations about testing children so young so a sample was tested. "We
could see no discomfort among the younger children," she said. "If they
didn't know, they knew to answer no. There was no embarrassment, no
uneasiness, no signs of discomfort."

Coquitlam school district is part of the national survey, which will ask
20,000 children about smoking, drugs and alcohol.

School board chair Barb Hobson said she was worried that some of the
questions asked in the survey could introduce 10-year-olds to drug
language, a concern echoed by Melissa Hyndes, chair of the District Parent
Advisory Council.

But Majewski said the sample survey and other scientific knowledge about
children shows children don't pick up drug concepts from tests. "We don't
think that is how knowledge spreads," she said. "Chances that it would be
planting something are minimal."

Majewski, a sociologist, explained that while TV is an exciting experience
for children and one they might want to emulate, "the test is part of
another world - it is not an exciting experience." It is, in fact, as dull
as a real test -- no illustrations, no colour. "It's very official,
although the tone is friendly."

Stats Canada has spent five months designing the survey. "We started in
January and were still making changes at the end of May," she said. Most of
the survey is a follow-up to an alcohol and tobacco survey in 1994 and
those questions had to be the same, so the months of work were devoted to
the drug portion. Stats Canada will publish a summary of results but the
data will be used by researchers to determine a myriad of things; for
example, the numbers could help educators determine the appropriate age, or
the necessary age, to introduce anti-drug messages into school curricula.

Currently in School District 43, anti-drug education starts in Grade 6. If
the survey shows Grade 5 students are already knowledgeable because of
family or media influences, it may be valuable to start earlier, she said.
Or it may show that campaigns have been successful and the threshold could
be raised to a higher grade.

The test itself, Majewski said, is so sensitive to children and the nature
of the topic that it doesn't have questions that say if an answer is no,
skip to the next section. There are no skips because if child A shows a
skip by flipping to subsequent pages, a child at the next desk might be
able to figure out how child A answered a question.

"The response situation is not as transparent to other kids," she said. "It
doesn't provide clues."

The survey is huge in numbers to provide an accurate sample of some
uncommon elements, she said. For example, the number of Grade 5 students
who smoke is so small that it requires surveying 4,000 students in that
grade to find enough of them.

Majewski said she hoped the concerns in Coquitlam would not result in a
significant portion of parents refusing to allow their children to
participate. Hypothetically, if parents with children in one of the
selected schools persuaded the principal to not participate, it could skew
overall results because of the demographic balancing needed for accuracy.
"We need people not to be prejudiced," she said.