The Context of HIV Risk Among Drug Users and Their Sexual Partners

make sense of their world.” Koester discusses the two ethnographic
approaches to data collection, participant observation and open-ended
interviews, and how these approaches are combined over time to gain
insights and a fuller understanding of a particular group of people.
However, he observes that the traditional ethnographic approaches have
been modified within the context of HIV research to solve a narrow
research question.
Specifically, Koester discusses the contributions of ethnographic research
on the meaning of risk and on the micro and macro contexts in which risk
behaviors take place. In addition to the review of the qualitative
methodology for the collection of information on HIV risk behaviors, he
points out the importance of the phrasing and context of the questions
asked by the researcher in a variety of settings and the relationship of the
responses received to time, situation, and role of the respondent.
In conclusion, Koester relates the importance of having a
multidimensional measure of risk behaviors in order to gain sufficient
information to intervene and alter or modify these behaviors through
planned community, environmental, and individual programs.
Finally, Gibson and Young in their chapter, Assessing the Reliability and
Validity of Self-Reported Risk Behavior, examine the issues of the
meaning of data collected through quantitative approaches, specifically
structured questionnaires. This chapter reviews the authors and others’
research that examines the extent to which drug abusers report certain
behaviors reliably and the degrees to which self-report instruments obtain
valid responses. Three aspects of these issues are discussed: (1) the
truthfulness of the information on HIV risk practices provided by
intravenous drug users; (2) the extent to which the tendency to provide
socially desirable responses “contaminate” self-report(s); and (3) methods
researchers can use to reduce response bias when collecting information
on sensitive behaviors.
Gibson and Young present the analyses of their studies with intravenous
drug users, which show that questions regarding drug use-particularly
sharing of injection equipment-were threatening to the respondents, and
questions regarding oral and anal sex were sensitive areas of inquiry.
They tested different data collection techniques to determine which were
best for these two behavioral areas. They found that response bias was
reduced by utilizing a questionnaire format that used long,
185