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

along with discussion of some technical and statistical difficulties in
conducting research (and by extension, intervention programs) that is
more sensitive and specific to people in their settings. Like the ecological
model, other research models need to become multidimensional and to
incorporate indicators and measures across different strata of social
complexity.
The issue of serendipity referred to above has application to contextual
effects of the study mode itself. The interview process itself may (and
does) have an effect. When both groups have had before-and-after
interviews, this serendipitous effect could work to restrict the differences
that are observed between experimental and control groups in
intervention studies and between alternative intervention strategies.
Whether or not this effect is a variation of the Hawthorne effect
(Roethlisberger and Dickson 1939) of test-retest, it does suggest the need
to modify the study design. The study could be modified by adding
another group to be interviewed only at followup (carefully matched to
the before-and-after experimental and control groups) or by statistically
matching the results for the control and experimental groups with data
obtained in the same period from equivalent populations outside of the
study. These supplementary data could be used to estimate how much of
an intervention effect being interviewed and being part of a study group
comprises in and of itself.
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Harlem Health Study. J Addict Dis 11:119-137, 1991.
Brunswick, A.F.; Aidala, A.; Dobkin, J.; Howard, J.; Titus, S.P.; and
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