"Primary sources provide raw information and first-hand evidence. Examples include interview transcripts, statistical data, and works of art. Primary research gives you direct access to the subject of your research.
Secondary sources provide second-hand information and commentary from other researchers. Examples include journal articles, reviews, and academic books. Thus, secondary research describes, interprets, or synthesizes primary sources.
Primary sources are more credible as evidence, but good research uses both primary and secondary sources..."
Okay. In this context, the primary source is the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which I already explained to you. Caulkins did an analysis of those data, which is the form that most academic articles take. I actually did a similar analysis here: https://ifstudies.org/blog/pot-and-pathology. But you want a primary source so ... go analyze the NSDUH data. If you need a link, it's in the post.
ah, much better. Now there's a common basis of information I can draw on. As opposed to trying to parse out the exact details of what someone else said on a video to our mutual satisfaction.
Transcripts are where it's at. (As long as they aren't rush C-Span transcripts, which disrespect the medium of text mercilessly, and provide a convincing argument that AI is still hopelessly impaired at deciphering human speech...chess wizard or not, AI can't even call a baseball game.)
Only thing is- no year provided for the NSDUH survey: there are at least two reports under that moniker.
A link to an NSDUH study from 2020 is found only once, highlighted in the first footnote at the bottom of the page. Presumably, that's where I'll find the table in question. But I can't tell yet. If I find it, I'll supply a page number.
"1. The 2020 National Survey of Drug Use and Health cautions against comparing data collected in 2020 to prior yearsтАЩ data, because of changes in survey methodology due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I do so here both because the 2002 тАУ 2019 trend is instructive, and because the 2020 estimate deviates downward from that trend, suggesting that methodology-introduced bias underestimates the true change in heavy use.
2. For a given respondent, I estimate this as total number of past month days of use (the variable MRDAYPMO) multiplied by 12, multiplied by that respondentтАЩs weight, which in the NSDUH public use file is equivalent to how much of the target population that respondent represents. The sum of these is the total number of days of use. This is actually an underestimate, because any users who report using in the past year but not the past monthтАФabout 7.5% of respondents to the 2020 NSDUHтАФare counted by this method as not having used."
So you've done your own interpretation of (a little bit of) the primary source data. Just to be clear. Not that there's anything wrong with that; I've been known to do it myself. I try to stay out of the tall weeds of interpretations that prove difficult to check, though. The weighting game is problematic, unless the data is forthrightly amenable to being parsed and assessed simply in the reading of it.
The data Jon and I use are aggregated from the 2002 to 2019 NSDUH surveys, and Jon also uses the precursor household survey to the NSDUH. We don't get the figures out of the tables in the NSDUH *report*, which is itself not a "primary source" as you've confusingly defined it, i.e. it is an SAMHSA analysis of the raw data from a survey. To reconstruct the figures, you have to download each year's microdata and analyze them individually.
I mean, all of this is very apparent if you have a passing familiarity with how drug use is measured. So I'm not sure why you needed to be rude to me for an extended period of time to get to this point.
The most comprehensive history I've ever read on marijuana- and I've read a lot of them. Almost all of the ones published in English, if not all of them.
Including the axe-grinding antis, of course- Harry Anslinger, Donald B. DeLouria, Gabriel Nahas, Robert DuPont, Joe Califano, Alex Berenson. Although those books aren't really histories; they're more intended as inquisitorial bills of indictment. None of them impressed me. But, after all, if you don't comprehend the arguments of your opponents, you don't fully have a grasp of your own position.
It's sad. We agree on some important points. But they share an irrationally exaggerated terror of the risks of marijuana. And all of them think that officially ordained punitive moralism is useful in matters of public health policy, whereas I view it as a severe iatrogenic complication. Possibly a lethal complication, if left untreated. And the influence of punitive moralism on US drug policy has been left largely untreated for around the past 100 years.
I'm just trying to inspire some scholarly rigor on your part, CFL. I'd expect nothing less from people scrutinizing my own Substack posts with a critical eye.
Fwiw, there's nothing especially edifying about pointing me to an opening table of contents page.
In my own posts, I supply primary source links and/or bibliography references, with page numbers and pdf names- or direct links, if possible. An act of courtesy, to the readers. People actually willing to read long-form post content deserve all the courtesy they can get, in this day and age. It's implicitly patronizing to present them with information that they aren't able to easily confirm for themselves. Especially in the age of hyperlinks.
I have to note that I've disabled all comments on my site, for the time being. That's intended as an effort to limit my own problems with preferring to exchange news and views in comment sections over shaping up Substack posts of my own! But, you see how it is. It's a terrible weakness- almost a "disorder", one might say. Like a Funbridge addiction.
I'm tempted to take the easy way out and just do reposts of the comments on my own site, but I just have...trouble...doing that. It feels like cheating. The narrative arc is disrupted.
.My current plan is to allow post commenting on Iconoclasms/ADWJ site by autumntime. So feel free to write some up and file them away, as future replies.
The analytic portion of the SAMSHA reports is the text portion that's found in various synopses of subtopics. The raw numerical survey data was compiled and submitted to SAMHSA for publication; those metrics and tables are indisputably primary source data. That includes any tables and metrics found in the text digest portion of the NSDUH report.
The new NSDUH appears to be emphasizing more incorporation of that interpretive material into the content, in comparison with the previous format. We'll see how they do. It certainly took SAMHSA and ONDCP a while to draw much importance from the findings of the early 2000s- which indicated that for a few years running, more 9th and 12th graders were obtaining their first experiences with (non-alcohol, non-tobacco) drugs from diverted prescription pills than from marijuana. They weren't even distinguishing between the types of prescription pills in their survey questions, for a while. (Fortunately, the number of opioid pill-popping teens has since gone into a steep decline- probably less than 1/3 of what it formerly was at the peak level of 10-15 years ago, although given the earlier deficiencies in survey data specifics, only rough estimates are possible. In any event, it's excellent news, even if I've never seen it as a news headline or a TV story. A drug control and drug education success story. But, oh noes, legal pot...)
can you just quickly define "primary source"
Yes.
"Primary sources provide raw information and first-hand evidence. Examples include interview transcripts, statistical data, and works of art. Primary research gives you direct access to the subject of your research.
Secondary sources provide second-hand information and commentary from other researchers. Examples include journal articles, reviews, and academic books. Thus, secondary research describes, interprets, or synthesizes primary sources.
Primary sources are more credible as evidence, but good research uses both primary and secondary sources..."
https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/primary-and-secondary-sources/
That's one site of many, but the sources are agreed on the definition. There's even a Wiki page! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_source
Pro tip: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22primary+source%22&t=newext&atb=v336-1&ia=web
Found the answer in under 60 seconds. That's how I use the Internet for research. Not fumbling around in the Twitter sandbox.
I could have supplied the definition myself- some of us learned it in school- but I wanted outside support.
Okay. In this context, the primary source is the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which I already explained to you. Caulkins did an analysis of those data, which is the form that most academic articles take. I actually did a similar analysis here: https://ifstudies.org/blog/pot-and-pathology. But you want a primary source so ... go analyze the NSDUH data. If you need a link, it's in the post.
ah, much better. Now there's a common basis of information I can draw on. As opposed to trying to parse out the exact details of what someone else said on a video to our mutual satisfaction.
Transcripts are where it's at. (As long as they aren't rush C-Span transcripts, which disrespect the medium of text mercilessly, and provide a convincing argument that AI is still hopelessly impaired at deciphering human speech...chess wizard or not, AI can't even call a baseball game.)
Only thing is- no year provided for the NSDUH survey: there are at least two reports under that moniker.
A link to an NSDUH study from 2020 is found only once, highlighted in the first footnote at the bottom of the page. Presumably, that's where I'll find the table in question. But I can't tell yet. If I find it, I'll supply a page number.
Interesting footnotes on that linked page, too:
https://ifstudies.org/blog/pot-and-pathology
"1. The 2020 National Survey of Drug Use and Health cautions against comparing data collected in 2020 to prior yearsтАЩ data, because of changes in survey methodology due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I do so here both because the 2002 тАУ 2019 trend is instructive, and because the 2020 estimate deviates downward from that trend, suggesting that methodology-introduced bias underestimates the true change in heavy use.
2. For a given respondent, I estimate this as total number of past month days of use (the variable MRDAYPMO) multiplied by 12, multiplied by that respondentтАЩs weight, which in the NSDUH public use file is equivalent to how much of the target population that respondent represents. The sum of these is the total number of days of use. This is actually an underestimate, because any users who report using in the past year but not the past monthтАФabout 7.5% of respondents to the 2020 NSDUHтАФare counted by this method as not having used."
So you've done your own interpretation of (a little bit of) the primary source data. Just to be clear. Not that there's anything wrong with that; I've been known to do it myself. I try to stay out of the tall weeds of interpretations that prove difficult to check, though. The weighting game is problematic, unless the data is forthrightly amenable to being parsed and assessed simply in the reading of it.
The data Jon and I use are aggregated from the 2002 to 2019 NSDUH surveys, and Jon also uses the precursor household survey to the NSDUH. We don't get the figures out of the tables in the NSDUH *report*, which is itself not a "primary source" as you've confusingly defined it, i.e. it is an SAMHSA analysis of the raw data from a survey. To reconstruct the figures, you have to download each year's microdata and analyze them individually.
The public use files can be found here: https://www.datafiles.samhsa.gov/data-sources
Yes. "That's a start", as we intrepid data researchers say.
I mean, all of this is very apparent if you have a passing familiarity with how drug use is measured. So I'm not sure why you needed to be rude to me for an extended period of time to get to this point.
"all of this is very apparent if you have a passing familiarity with how drug use is measured."
Rest assured that this is not my first acquaintance with the subject.
For what it's worth, on the topic of providing information on cannabis, this guy blows away everyone else on Substack, including you and me:: https://www.cannabinoidsandthepeople.whitewhalecreations.com/
Book recommendation-- Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana, by Martin Lee (2013)
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Smoke_Signals/8XE-AAAAQBAJ?hl=en
The most comprehensive history I've ever read on marijuana- and I've read a lot of them. Almost all of the ones published in English, if not all of them.
Including the axe-grinding antis, of course- Harry Anslinger, Donald B. DeLouria, Gabriel Nahas, Robert DuPont, Joe Califano, Alex Berenson. Although those books aren't really histories; they're more intended as inquisitorial bills of indictment. None of them impressed me. But, after all, if you don't comprehend the arguments of your opponents, you don't fully have a grasp of your own position.
It's sad. We agree on some important points. But they share an irrationally exaggerated terror of the risks of marijuana. And all of them think that officially ordained punitive moralism is useful in matters of public health policy, whereas I view it as a severe iatrogenic complication. Possibly a lethal complication, if left untreated. And the influence of punitive moralism on US drug policy has been left largely untreated for around the past 100 years.
I'm just trying to inspire some scholarly rigor on your part, CFL. I'd expect nothing less from people scrutinizing my own Substack posts with a critical eye.
Fwiw, there's nothing especially edifying about pointing me to an opening table of contents page.
In my own posts, I supply primary source links and/or bibliography references, with page numbers and pdf names- or direct links, if possible. An act of courtesy, to the readers. People actually willing to read long-form post content deserve all the courtesy they can get, in this day and age. It's implicitly patronizing to present them with information that they aren't able to easily confirm for themselves. Especially in the age of hyperlinks.
I have to note that I've disabled all comments on my site, for the time being. That's intended as an effort to limit my own problems with preferring to exchange news and views in comment sections over shaping up Substack posts of my own! But, you see how it is. It's a terrible weakness- almost a "disorder", one might say. Like a Funbridge addiction.
I'm tempted to take the easy way out and just do reposts of the comments on my own site, but I just have...trouble...doing that. It feels like cheating. The narrative arc is disrupted.
.My current plan is to allow post commenting on Iconoclasms/ADWJ site by autumntime. So feel free to write some up and file them away, as future replies.
The analytic portion of the SAMSHA reports is the text portion that's found in various synopses of subtopics. The raw numerical survey data was compiled and submitted to SAMHSA for publication; those metrics and tables are indisputably primary source data. That includes any tables and metrics found in the text digest portion of the NSDUH report.
The new NSDUH appears to be emphasizing more incorporation of that interpretive material into the content, in comparison with the previous format. We'll see how they do. It certainly took SAMHSA and ONDCP a while to draw much importance from the findings of the early 2000s- which indicated that for a few years running, more 9th and 12th graders were obtaining their first experiences with (non-alcohol, non-tobacco) drugs from diverted prescription pills than from marijuana. They weren't even distinguishing between the types of prescription pills in their survey questions, for a while. (Fortunately, the number of opioid pill-popping teens has since gone into a steep decline- probably less than 1/3 of what it formerly was at the peak level of 10-15 years ago, although given the earlier deficiencies in survey data specifics, only rough estimates are possible. In any event, it's excellent news, even if I've never seen it as a news headline or a TV story. A drug control and drug education success story. But, oh noes, legal pot...)