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

variables should be selected and studies designed in a manner that allows
results to be used systematically to inform and develop a theoretical
framework.
CONTEXTUAL ISSUES SHOULD BE UNDERSTOOD AND
EXAMINED WITH BOTH QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE
METHODOLOGIES
One of the benefits of a technical review is that researchers with various
backgrounds and perspectives exchange ideas, and this process highlights
the complementarity of approaches. Quantitative and qualitative research
methods are often presented as opposite ends of a continuum, but such a
presentation ignores the fact that they are both methods of systematic
inquiry and learning whose shared opposite is ignorance. From that
perspective, it becomes incumbent on researchers to use multiple research
approaches to address a problem.
Important concepts in this regard are those of “experience near” and
“experience distant,” terms used by anthropologists to indicate proximity
to the language and concepts of the observed subject. Experience-near
language, such as backloading, is close to the world view and
phenomenology of the subject, whereas experience-distant language
reflects the observer’s terminology and conceptual organization.
Qualitative researchers use these ideas to evaluate how well their
observations reflect the subject’s experiences and interpretations and not
only the researcher’s views. Ethnographers present at the technical
review stressed the importance of experience-near language and thinking
in order to clarify contextual issues and to raise hypotheses. They also
noted that data provide insights into different levels of contextual
determinants. For example, the researcher arrives at different conclusions
if a self-report is taken as objective fact rather than as the subjects’ world
view. People neither recall nor report accurately and reliably their
experiences and motivations, tending to err in reports and to respond to
environmental contingencies, some of which they are not aware. They
often deny the influence of stimulus control and psychological
motivations that can be objectively related to their behavior (Critchfield
1993; Nisbett and Wilson 1977). Therefore, qualitative and quantitative
data both must be carefully examined to determine the realms of behavior
and context to which they refer.
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