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OTC Drug Use and Abuse by Elderly Adults

CSEF · 2016 Behavioral & Social Sciences

Shree R. Narasimhan · Marshall (Thurgood) Middle School, San Diego, San Diego County

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this study was to find out if elderly adults in a small temple town in South India self-medicate and the reasons for self-medication. Methods/Materials During this experiment a series of materials were used to mostly record data or help record it. A voice recorder was used to record a senior citizens interviews as a back-up to writing notes. A writing utensil is needed to record data on the questionnaire. A questionnaire was used to ask questions that were directly related to exploring the hypotheses. A computer was used to put data into an EXCEL spreadsheet when done. The most important one is at least 100 to 200 or more elderly adults had to be interviewed for the study. Results Results indicated that 40/163 adults or 25% adults took OTC drugs concurrently with prescription medication. Approximately 75% or 122 people out of 163 people did not know what interactions meant thus seniors did not know the consequences that come with drug interactions. Only 24.5% of seniors in the study relied on information from unqualified individuals. Conclusions/Discussion When looking over the results only hypothesis two was correct. Hypothesis one and three were incorrect. Hypothesis one it stated that 75% of seniors will take drugs concurrently. Results indicated that the number was close to 25%, not 75%. Hypothesis three was incorrect because it stated that 30% of the individuals will get information from unqualified individuals. Results indicated that only 24.5% of the individuals received information from unqualified sources. This shows that while doing the study not many seniors did self- medication in this particular temple town.

Summary statement

The purpose of this study was to find out if seniors in India do self-medication a lot and why as said in previous studies that were done on this topic.

Help received

Mrs. Elaine Gillum- Is very supportive and helped with editing the papers. Always gives great ideas! Parents- Mom gave me good ideas on how to make the paper sound better. Dad helped with logistics

Competition history

  • CSEF 2016 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry J0419

Resources

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