NCJ Number
139746
Date Published
1991
Length
101 pages
Annotation
Effective followup of drug abuse clients in the community is essential to any outcome study exploring changes in behavior consequent to an intervention, and this manual is intended to facilitate the process of followup and increase the integrity of evaluation research related to AIDS and intravenous drug abuse.
Abstract
The manual is part of the National AIDS Demonstration Research Project (NADR), a national outreach effort mounted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. NADR was initiated at 21 sites in 1987 and was operational at 63 sites by 1989. The project targets two populations, intravenous drug users (IVDU's) not in treatment and sexual partners of IVDU's. Contacts with IDVU's are made by indigenous outreach workers, health care and social workers, drug treatment counselors, and other community agency personnel. Once recruited into programs, participants are interviewed by trained staff using the AIDS Initial Assessment questionnaire, a detailed survey of demographic characteristics, drug use, needle use, and sexual practices and of AIDS knowledge and beliefs. Some of the key questions and considerations in followup research are the following: giving assurances of confidentiality; special considerations for ethnic groups; the outreach population; sampling; locating subjects by traditional techniques; followup via social networks; and interviewing. Characteristics of the IDVU outreach population are discussed, and recommendations for followup sampling are offered.