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

criminal history was unlikely to be threatening. Gibson and colleagues
(1987) found heroin addicts’ answers to questions about their
psychological or social functioning to be moderately to highly correlated
with a short form of the Marlowe-Crowne social desirability scale. In
particular, the answers were highly skewed by the tendency to deny
negative information about themselves and their families.
Test-Retest Reliability
In the present study, two attempts were made to assess the reliability of
IVDUs’ self-reports. First, part of the sample was reinterviewed to
determine whether their answers would be consistent across two
interviews; second, IVDU heterosexual couples (48 women and 48 men)
were interviewed separately to determine how closely their reports about
sexual practices agreed.
Test-retest correlations and correlations of partners’ self-reports have
been examined in a number of studies (for a review, see Catania et al.
1990) and frequently have been interpreted as validity indicators.
Reliability, however, while necessary to validity, is not sufficient to
establish the accuracy of self-reports. Reporting biases are as likely to be
reflected in a retest as in an initial interview, and partners’ reports may be
spuriously consistent due to shared biases. Unfortunately, there is not a
gold standard against which to evaluate the validity of self-reports, at
least at the individual level.
The retest interviews were conducted an average of 10 days following the
initial interview. Both interviews were conducted by trained interviewers
during clients’ daily visits to the drug treatment clinics. On both
occasions, respondents were asked to report their sexual and injection
practices during the 30 days prior to their admission to the detoxification
program (for several behaviors, a 6-month reporting period was also
used, and clients were asked whether the behaviors had ever been
practiced). Respondents were not told of the principal reason for the
second interview, only that some additional information not obtained in
the first interview was needed (additional items were added to the second
interview to disguise the intent). The interval of 10 days was selected to
be long enough so respondents would not remember what they had said
at the first interview but short enough so they would be able to accurately
report about their behavior during the month prior to their entry to
treatment.
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