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Angus Reid Consumer Survey on Antibiotics

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The Angus Reid patient/consumer telephone survey was conducted between January 26th and February 1st, 2000 and included interviews with 1,500 Canadians. The objective of the survey was to research consumers' attitudes toward antibiotics, to determine whether there have been significant changes during the past three years. This period of time coincides with educational programs implemented by NIPA since its creation in 1996.

Key findings:

61% of Canadians indicate that they have been prescribed an antibiotic in the last three years.
76% of those say that when prescribed an antibiotic, they always finish all of the medication even though they may feel better after a couple of days.
- 36% of these say they finish all of the medication because of doctor's/pharmacist's instructions or information in antibiotic packaging
- 12% of these say they finish all of the medication because if they don't the bacteria could develop resistance or the medication won't work
Of those consumers who say that they rarely (5%) / never (5%) finish all of the medication, 66% say that they stop taking it or forget to take it when they are feeling better.

(All data was collected via Angus Reid's national omnibus survey. Telephone interviews with 1,500 Canadians aged 18 and older were conducted between January 26th and February 1st, 2000. Final data is weighted to reflect 1996 Census data. For the purposes of this research, respondents were screened out if they have not been prescribed an antibiotic in the past 3 years. This resulted in a national sample size of 921, which carries an associated margin of error of +/- 3.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20).