MEDCAN Screening Survey

Thank you for your interest in participating in the Mobile Assessment of Medicinal Cannabis Use among Young Adults (MEDCAN) Study. This study is being conducted by Dr. Jeffrey Wardell with the Behavioural Alcohol and Cannabis (BAC) Research Lab at York University (ethics approval certificate #2024-250).

What is this study about?: The goal is to better understand the social, psychological, and health-related factors associated with use of cannabis to manage symptoms (such as pain, anxiety, sleep problems, ADHD, or any other physical, psychological, or neurological symptoms), and to examine how these differ from those associated with recreational reasons for cannabis use, among young adults. In this study, “medicinal cannabis use” is defined as use of cannabis to manage one’s symptoms and includes use of cannabis obtained from any source. Thus, you do not need to have a prescription for cannabis from a health care provider to participate.

What is involved?: Eligible participants will be asked to complete an initial assessment involving a one-time Zoom appointment (1 hr 45 mins) and completing an online survey (1 hr 15 mins). Participants will then use a smartphone app to answer several questions related to their cannabis use each day for a period of 14-days (completing an average of 4-6 brief surveys each day, for a total time commitment of about 5-20 min per day). Participants will then be invited to return for 60-90 min follow up assessments 6 and 12 months later. Eligible individuals can receive up to $260 in electronic gift cards (from Everythingcard.ca) for participating in all components of the study. The estimated total time commitment for all components of the study is 10 hours over a one-year period.

How do I know if I’m eligible?: You may be eligible to participate if you are 18-29 years old, you currently live in Canada, you use cannabis regularly to manage symptoms in addition to using cannabis for recreational reasons, and you own an iPhone or Android phone. You are not eligible to participate if you previously participated in a pilot version of this study titled “Mobile Assessment of Medicinal Cannabis Use among Young Adults (MEDCAN Study): Pilot Assessment of Use and Outcomes of Various Forms of Cannabis”. Other eligibility criteria apply. To determine if you are eligible to participate, we need to gather some information from you first. On the following screens, you will be asked to answer some questions about demographic characteristics, cannabis and other substance use, and health/mental health history. The eligibility survey will take about 3-5 minutes to complete.

All information that we collect is confidential, and all of the questions are voluntary, so if there’s anything you don’t feel comfortable answering, you don’t have to. You may stop the survey at any time. Completing the survey does not obligate you to participate in any further components of the research, and you will have a chance to ask questions before you agree to participate further. You will be asked to provide an email address so that we can contact you with more information and schedule you to participate if you are eligible.

The researchers acknowledge that the hosts of the online survey may automatically collect participant data without their knowledge (such as IP addresses). Although this information may be provided or made accessible to the researchers, it will not be used or saved without participant’s consent on the researchers’ system. However, because this project employs e-based data collection methods, data may be subject to access by third parties as a result of various security legislation now in place in many countries, and thus the confidentiality and privacy of data cannot be guaranteed during web-based transmission.

If you would like to request additional information or have any questions about this survey, you can contact us at BACLab@yorku.ca.

Thank you!
Behavioural Alcohol and Cannabis (BAC) Research Lab
York University
www.baclab.org