Team:Queens Canada/Community-Survey
Community Survey
Overview
Our team designed and released a survey to both the Queen’s and Kingston communities. The intent of this survey was to gather the level of Lyme disease knowledge that the general population has, as well as what the community would most value in a testing device. Overall, we received 86 responses to our survey and chose to leave any demographic details anonymous to remain as general and respectful as possible.
Conclusions
Due to the wide variety of questions that were asked in this survey, there is no definite measure of knowledge that the public has on ticks and Lyme disease. However, we can use this data as a suggestion of areas to focus our work on, as well as how we can optimize our testing device to meet the public needs. One of the most interesting results from this survey is the perceived prevalence of Lyme disease in Kingston. Kingston is considered a hotspot for Lyme disease with a higher number of cases than the surrounding areas. However, the number of people that believe that Lyme disease is prevalent or very prevalent in the region was only 36%. This indicates that Lyme disease awareness is important to prevent a rise in cases and educate the region on how to treat this disease. Although Lyme disease is present globally, Ixodes ticks (Black-legged ticks) migrate to moist wooded areas within certain climatic zones, creating hotspots where the spread of Lyme disease is greater. The survey data reflects that the knowledge of global prevalence is not entirely accurate, however, ambiguity prevents any conclusions from being drawn from the data.
To further test the public knowledge of Lyme disease, we asked how Lyme disease is spread. Most survey participants agreed that the disease is spread by ticks with only one participant believing the disease is spread by water and one participant believing the disease is spread by limes. Overall, this is a good indicator that the Kingston community knows that ticks carry diseases.
The most important question asked was what features the consumers want to see in our testing device. The data received from this question was paired with the Market Segmentation Analysis performed to optimize the device design. From this question, it was evident that the survey participants most valued faster diagnostic times, followed by the need for specificity and sensitivity, respectively. Overall, most participants agreed that the lack of awareness was the largest problem in current Lyme disease diagnostics.
The last question asked what is the percentage of tick bites lead to Lyme disease. Often, this percentage is dependent on the time that a tick is engorged before being removed. As a general rule, if a tick has been attached for over 24 hours, there is a high likelihood that the animal or person that has been bitten has contracted Lyme disease.
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