West Australian Student Depression Attitudes Survey
The West Australian Student Depression Attitudes Survey (WASDAS) was an online survey hosted on this site in September - November 2009. Over 1500 WA University students participated in the study. We would like to thank all those students who participated.
The broad aim of the study was to learn about WA University students’ attitudes towards depression and its treatment.
The study investigated several important topics such as
- knowledge of the symptoms of depression
- attitudes towards self-help and professional treatments for depression (such as exercise, antidepressant medication, and counselling)
- attitudes towards people who have experienced depression
- attitudes towards seeking help for depression
The survey consisted of around 350 items. Each student who participated in the study answered around 100 items that were randomly selected from the lbank of 350 items. The reason for having students answer only a subset of the 350 questions was to minimize the length of time it took any individual student to participate in the study.
The results of the study will be useful in helping to better educate the public about depression. They will also be useful in helping mental health professionals to assist students who suffer from depression.
Analysis of the data collected in the study will commence soon (December 2009). Because the amount of data collected was very large, it will take several months to analyse it all. Feedback on the results of the study will be posted on this page in due course.
We would like to thank the many students who left feedback on the survey. This feedback was very helpful. Three main themes emerged.
- Many students commented that research into depression is very important, and that they were glad that research into depression is being conducted.
- Many students noted that it would have been useful to have a ‘comments box’ on each page of the survey, so that they could have provided additional information about their answers. We have taken this suggestion on board and will be adding a ‘comments box’ to each page of future surveys that we conduct.
- Some students commented that the survey questions were at times repetitive. The reason for the repetition was that one of the aims of the study was to help design better, shorter questionnaires (e.g., about attitudes towards treatments for depression) that researchers will be able to use in future surveys. To do this, it was necessary to ask many (somewhat repetitive) questions so that we can identify the best / most useful questions . This means that in future studies, only the ‘best’ questions will be used, and as a result those surveys will be less repetitive.
Thank you once again to those students who participated in the study.
