The European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) data explorer tool allows access to over 20 years of ESPAD data on substance use among 15-16-year-old students. ESPAD is the largest cross-national research project on adolescent substance use in the world, bringing together independent research teams in over 40 European countries. Developed by the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), the new tool holds data collected between 1995 and 2019.

The purpose of the tool is to make ESPAD data available to a wide range of interested stakeholders, from the general population, journalists and teachers to prevention experts and scientists.  The new platform offers users access to information on three levels:  

• Homepage — featuring interactive maps and graphs, a ‘Topics’ section, latest results and new trends in specific substances and behaviours;
• Search toolbar — allowing keyword searches to explore questions in the ESPAD questionnaires, the number of respondents and the frequency of answers by year, by country and by gender;
• Expert area — offering data exploration for expert users. A registration phase is required to gain access to this restricted area. Here users can analyse and visualise data using a wide range of parameters and can save their searches and download results (e.g. in graphical format).

Data are exclusively displayed in aggregated form by countries participating in the study and by year of the study. Specific statistical measures (e.g. frequency distribution and prevalence rates) are calculated before visualisation, by means of charts.