Characteristics and social representation of ecstasy in Europe - Irefrea

consumers sample comprises individuals who do not take ecstasy but may be takinganother type of drug. In fact, analysis of the consumption variables (see chapter 5)shows us that non-consumers also make use of drugs, notably alcohol and cannabis. Theecstasy consumers sample, for its part, comprises individuals who consume other typesof drug -multiconsumers in other words-and, in addition, who consume them withgreater frequency than the non ecstasy consumer group.Therefore, the difference between the non-consumers and consumers sample is notonly that the former do not use ecstasy and the latter do but that, in general, theindividuals in the ecstasy non-consumer sample use drugs with a lower frequency thanthose in the ecstasy consumers sample.Below, we give the results of the Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) and the differentsubscales that it comprises in respect of the four variables:1. Country.2. Sample type.3. Consumer group.4. Sex.In order to ascertain the significance of the differences between the mean scoreresulting from the analysis broken down by country, sample type and consumer group,several parametric tests and the non-parametric test by Kruskal Wallis were carried out.The table shows the values obtained for this latter test, in that some sub-scales do notgive the implications necessary for the comparison of the means with parametric testsand this type of non-parametric test is the most appropriate.In order to find the differences in mean scores in respect of sex, an analysis wasapplied of mean differences based on the variance.6.2.1. SSS scores for the overall sample by country.In this section, the mean scores of each city were calculated and compared for theoverall sample (all the people interviewed in each city). In order to be able to betterexplain the origin of the difference between the various cities, the results have beencompleted with a factorial analysis between the type of consumer variable and thecountry variable, so that, in this way, we can justify some of the differences thatappear.We have considered 5 types of consumers; non-consumers of ecstasy (practicallyhalf the sample), occasional or experimental consumers, habitual, compulsives and exconsumers.79