Supervised Consumption Sites Analysis

Introduction Supervised Consumption Sites (SCS) has always been a controversial topic that has divide society into two. The people who support SCSs often argue that it has the potential to reduce disease transmission, prevent people from overdosing, and give them more access to health and social programs (Article). The people who are against however argue that it is promoting illegal drug use and sends a negative message to society. The issue here is that for SCS to truly be effective, they must have the full cooperation of society and more importantly the police force. If the police force does not support SCSs, the clients of the SCSs may feel harassed and thus impede their road to recovery (Article). Knowing the importance of this, it
is strange to see that researchers have yet to examine police's attitudes towards SCSs. This is where Tara Watson, Ahmed Bayoumi, Gillian Kolla, Rebecca Penn, Benedikt Fischer, Jamie Luce & Carol Strike's article plays an important role in finding out the attitudes and perceptions that the police hold towards SCSs. The purpose of this paper will be to evaluate Watson et al., 2012's article- the Police Perception of Supervised Consumption Sites (SCSs): A Qualitative Study. As a result of evaluating the main objectives of this research paper, describe what type of research paper it is, and whether the research paper is reliable, it will not only increase my knowledge in qualitative studies, but to demonstrate why using qualitative studies in this situation would be ideal versus using quantitative studies.

Main Objectives The main objectives of this paper is two firstly explore the attitudes and perceptions that police officers have towards the SCS and harm reduction, and more importantly, the sources of these views.
Secondly the article talks about how police use evidence to support certain harm reduction initiatives (Article). What this means is that the researchers want to know how the police feel about SCSs, whether they support it or not. As well, they want to know whether or not the police agree or disagree with the SCSs' attempt to reduce harm by providing a legal site where people can safely inject themselves with medics around and how they came to this conclusion. This is important as by studying police's views towards SCSs, and how they came to their views, we can better understand why certain police forces are against the SCSs and potentially alter them. This is all done because the support of the police force is crucial for the success of SCS's as the SCS clients should not feel afraid to approach these sites
(Article)
The style of the research The way this paper examines these questions is by using a descriptive (exploratory) study and before I explain why, I will first outline what a descriptive study means. Jane Ritchie and Jane Lewis (2013) define descriptive research as a study that attempts to explore the "participants' understanding and interpretations of social phenomena" (p.28). This is evident in Watson et al., study as they were trying to figure out how the police force- the participants- viewed the SCSs, which would be the social phenomena. Also if we were to look at the results of their study, it is clear that the majority of it was focused on how the police force did not have a positive view towards SCSs as many believed that it was undermining their work at preventing drug use. The study also focused on how the police force viewed the drug addicts as people who were completely consumed by their addiction and could not function properly as a result. All of this illustrates that the study was focusing in on how the police force felt towards SCSs and their clients. The study also found that the police prioritized certain information and reports over the other and had a potentially bias way of filtering information. This along with the fact that they dismissed SCSs based on traditional values shows us that the study was able to find out the rout cause of their attitude and the factors that led to their decision making. This falls within the scope of what a exploratory study does as it is often used by qualitative researchers as a tool to help study one's attitude, behavior, and their motivation (Ritchie & Lewis, 2013, p.28). Ms.
Watson and her colleagues decided to use one on one interviews then combined it with group discussions in order to produce detailed results of the participants personal perspectives (Ritchie & Lewis, 2013, p. 28). This would be considered a generated data as they recreating or retelling their experiences to the researchers. This method of data collection is ideal for the study as it gives the police officers a platform where they can express their views. Individual interviews also allows the researcher a chance to ask questions to clarify any points. This is crucial as the researchers are attempting to find out the views that these participants have towards SCSs, meaning the answers are subjective and may require the participant to clarify unambiguous terms. The group discussion also helps facilitate discussion and allows the group to collectively work together to attempt to understand a complex subject such as their views on SCSs (article). As well, with group discussion, multiple point of views and stands are presented which only adds a layer of richness to the results. The other method of collecting data, the naturally occurring data, would also work, but may raise ethical questions such as lying to the police about their true objectives in an attempt to not influence their decision making. Also doing ride along with police officers poses a treat to the researcher and to the police officers and documentary analysis would not be ideal here as the subject as
yet to be throughly studied, meaing there will be a minimum amount of existing documents in which the researcher can draw upon. The research is also a single research episodes as there is only one interview session followed by a group discussion between the researcher and the police force. This is crucial as the police force is often busy with other tasks and will likely not be able to allow multiple interview sessions. As well, the purpose of the research is not to see whether or not there is a change in the attitiude of the police force, but rather what is their views towards SCSs so having a longitudinal research should not be used in this situation as it does not fit the purpose of the study (53). As well, like mentioned above, one on one interviews provide for a rich source of material as it gives the researcher the power to probe, and if the researcher was competent, there should be no reason why one interview session would not be enough. Lastly, the study samples its population through the snowballing technique. This means that the researcher asked the police force to suggest suitable police officers. This raises some concern on validity which will be discussed later.