Experiment to Enhance the Reporting of Drug Use by Arrestees in Cleveland, Detroit, and Houston, 1997

This project involved an experiment conducted in three Drug
Use Forecasting (DUF) [DRUG USE FORECASTING IN 24 CITIES IN THE UNITED
STATES, 1987-1997 (ICPSR 9477)] program sites to determine whether
using a more detailed informed consent procedure and/or altering the
sequence of the interview and urine specimen collection could enhance
the validity of arrestees' self-reports of drug use without adversely
affecting study response rates. A 2x2 factorial design was used to
assess the effects of the two manipulations. The first two
experimental conditions involved administering either the standard DUF
informed consent or an enhanced consent that told the arrestees more
about the confidential nature of the research and the capabilities of
urinalysis. The second two conditions involved collecting the urine
specimen either before or after the interview was administered. The
experiment included 2,015 adult arrestees from Cleveland, Ohio,
Detroit, Michigan, and Houston, Texas, who were randomly assigned to
one of the four experimental conditions. The experiment was designed
so that the only variability across the interviews was the
manipulation of informed consent and the sequencing of the urine
specimen request. All other procedures of a standard DUF collection
were followed. Data were collected in Cleveland between July 8 and
August 22, 1997, in Detroit from August 4 to September 27, 1997, and
in Houston from October 17 to November 1, 1997. Variables specific to
this project include the experimental condition to which the
respondent was assigned, follow-up questions asking whether the
arrestee would have responded differently if assigned to the other
conditions, and several dummy variables on length and type of drug
use. Data from the DUF interview provided detailed information about
each arrestee's self-reported use of 15 drugs. For each drug type,
arrestees were asked whether they had ever used the drug, the age at
which they first used the drug, whether they had used the drug within
the past three days, how many days they had used the drug within the
past month, whether they had ever needed or felt dependent on the
drug, and whether they were dependent on the drug at the time of the
interview. Data from the DUF interview instrument also included
alcohol/drug treatment history, information about whether arrestees
had ever injected drugs, and whether they were influenced by drugs
when the crime that they were charged with was committed. The data
also include information about whether the arrestee had been to an
emergency room for drug-related incidents and whether he or she had
had prior arrests in the past 12 months. Urine tests screened for the
presence of ten drugs, including marijuana, opiates, cocaine, PCP,
methadone, benzodiazepines (Valium), methaqualone, propoxyphene
(Darvon), barbiturates, and amphetamines (positive test results for
amphetamines were confirmed by gas chromatography). Demographic data
include the age, race, sex, educational attainment, marital status,
employment status, and living circumstances of each respondent.

Tags: drug-abuse, drug-dependence, drug-testing, drug-treatment, drug-use, offenders, treatment-programs, urinalysis
Organization: Department of Justice