Analysis of the effectiveness of drug awareness campaigns using google trends

Abstract

Globally, drug-related problems have attracted much attention from the public because of the negative health effects and the huge social burden. Therefore, Policymakers, healthcare institutions, and the people are concentrating on improving drug awareness to eradicate the abuse of illicit or prescription drugs for the destiny of a healthier community. They spent a lot to designate drug prevention campaigns as well as programs. However, the previous study has not measured the effectiveness of drug awareness campaigns comprehensively and accurately. The public was also understudied previously where the public learning preference and knowledge loophole of the drug are unclear yet. The foremost objective of this article is to figure out the effectiveness of drug awareness campaigns using Google Trends. It also aims at revealing audiences' preference of search method when they searching for the related information. This articleuses the qualitative method to explore the effectiveness of drug awareness campaign and the preferred search methods of the public to gain information about drugs by analyzing the data on Google Trends which tracks the public interest of "drugs" over time worldwide. The result found that the effect of the global drug awareness campaigns in 2018 is moderate and ephemeral and public prefers using the web search to collect information they want about "drugs". Globally, "pharmaceutical drugs"is the hottest topic related to drugs during the last year. This article finds a generally moderate influence of drug awareness campaigns in 2018. The public prefers to use Web Search to find information about drugs. Moreover, the top 5 countries where the "drugs" gains the highest attention from the public is different when the search method is different.