The information in this survey has a number of limitations that must be considered when reading the data.
- The survey is not a representative sample of all people withdrawing from benzodiazepines. The people who were approached to take this survey were all members of the various internet benzodiazepine support groups. As such they are unlikely to represent all people who are withdrawing from benzodiazepines.
- The participants in this survey were not selected at random. While all the members of the Yahoo Benzo Support group were approached individually to participate in this survey and notices announcing the survey were placed on all the other benzodiazepines internet support groups, this survey is essentially a self select survey and as such cannot be seen to representative of all benzodiazepine withdrawers. Self selection is likely to introduce a bias into the results.
- The response rate is low. At the time of doing this survey there were 3020 members in the support group. Email contact for 361 of the members failed (bouncing) and 346 surveys were completed as at 21st of June 2007 when the initial result were compiled. This is a response rate of around 13%. A low response rate reduces confidence in the data.
These results represent a picture of those who chose to respond to the survey. They do not represent a picture of all benzodiazepine withdrawal and no such claims are inferred.
It is also very important to remember that these are 'just figures' and as such they can never be used to determine the course of an individual’s withdrawal journey. Each person’s journey is and always will be unique. Do not assume that because the figures seem to indicate some sort of trend that this is what will happen to you.