SURVEY QUESTIONING CAN ALTER SUBJECTS' BEHAVIOR, STUDY SAYS

WASHINGTON - Simply asking college students who are inclined to take
drugs about their illegal-drug use in a survey may increase the
behavior, according to newly published findings that are making some
researchers understandably nervous.

"We ask people questions, and that does change behavior," study
co-author Gavan Fitzsimons, a marketing professor at Duke
University's Fuqua School of Business in Durham, N.C., said Thursday.
The provocative effect, he added, can be "much greater than most of
us would like to believe."

It's not just drug use that's affected by a researcher's questions,
Fitzsimons said. People exercised more after they were asked how much
they exercised. In a follow-up experiment, students who were asked
about skipping classes and drinking cut class more and drank more.

Since the study appeared in the June issue of the academic journal
Social Influence, Fitzsimons' research team has fielded calls from
health practitioners concerned that asking patients about depression
and possible thoughts of suicide might make matters worse. Other
researchers suspect that people polled in political campaigns become
more politically active.

For their study, Fitzsimons and co-researchers Patti Williams and
Lauren Block, marketing professors at the University of Pennsylvania
in Philadelphia and Baruch College in New York, respectively, split a
sample of 167 undergraduate students into two groups. Those in the
first group were asked how likely they were to use drugs in the next
two months. Those in the second were asked how likely they were to
exercise in the next two months.

Two months later, both were asked how often they'd exercised and how
often they'd used drugs. Students in the first group said they'd used
drugs an average of 2.8 times. Students in the second group, who
hadn't been asked about drug use two months before, said they'd used
drugs an average of 1.1 times.

When it came to exercise, students who'd been asked earlier about
their exercise plans said they'd exercised about one-third more than
students who hadn't been asked.

To assemble two balanced groups, the researchers initially asked the
students about prior drug use and their attitudes toward it. This
enabled them to conclude that the increased use was "only true for
people who were already predisposed or in the at-risk group for drug
use," Fitzsimons said. "People who never used drugs just had their
negative opinions cemented."

Survey questions still pose some risk, however, said Williams, of the
University of Pennsylvania. "It's very difficult, because
policymakers still have to ask these questions but don't want to
cause harm," she said. "Anytime you are asking about risky
behaviors, there is a chance that merely asking will activate a
positive attitude for those who already have a positive inclination
toward the behavior."

Cliff Zukin, the president of the American Association of Public
Opinion Research in Lenexa, Kan., which sets standards for the field,
called the study eye-opening. He wondered whether college-student
drug use might be easily provoked, which would suggest that the
effect is milder than it seems.

"Surveys are not designed to influence behavior," added Zukin, a
polling expert at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. "But when
you talk to people about a topic, you get them thinking about that
topic. That's a normal human reaction, and I don't see a way to get
around that."

The new findings, he said, will "force us to really think about
question wording."

The Office of National Drug Control Policy, which uses polls of teens
and college students to focus its anti-drug appeals, has devised
protocols to avoid unexpected adverse effects, spokesman Tom Riley said.

Fitzsimons and his team said they were seeking ways to minimize those
effects, too.