What does the American public want to know about addiction? A national systematic qualitative investigation

In addiction-focused clinical and public health communications intended to educate the public, assumptions are made regarding in which specific knowledge aspects the target population is deficient, so these can be emphasized and harms minimized. It is rare, however, that outreach campaign messaging is based on specific known knowledge deficits. This lack of information can lead to prevention and intervention messaging that not only fails to gain target audiences' attention but can produce unintended consequences. Greater knowledge about information deficits could enhance the impact of addiction-specific health campaigns.

Cross-sectional investigation involving members of the public (N = 1,257) sampled via the Prolific platform. Participants listed their top 10 questions pertaining to one of six different types of addiction problems (addiction-general [n = 211], alcohol [n = 209], cannabis [n = 209], cocaine [n = 211], opioids [n = 214], gambling [n = 209]). Results were categorized using qualitative thematic and grounded theory and ranked according to proportional frequency.

Types of questions asked fell into nine domains (e.g., etiology, clinical characterization and course, drug characteristics, pharmacology) and subdomains, with topics varying substantially within addiction type (e.g., cannabis, opioids) across domains (e.g., etiology, treatment), as well as within domains across types. Differences in the proportion of types of questions asked across and within domains were highly variable differing across addiction types (i.e., cannabis, opioids, gambling).

Findings have implications for clinical and public health campaigns helping to highlight more precisely the exact nature and extent of potential population-level knowledge deficits across specific addiction types. These might be prioritized and targeted in knowledge dissemination efforts for prevention and treatment engagement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).