DOI: 10.3886/icpsr02890
title: Experiment to Enhance the Reporting of Drug Use by Arrestees in Cleveland, Detroit, and Houston, 1997
title: Archival Version

description: 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.
description: Findings from the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF)
 Program [DRUG USE FORECASTING IN 24 CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES,
 1987-1997 (ICPSR 9477)] indicate that many arrestees underreport
 their recent use of illicit drugs in spite of the many attempts to
 convince arrestees that their responses are part of a confidential and
 anonymous research study and cannot affect their cases. If arrestees
 fail to report drug use accurately in research interviews, and if the
 level of underreporting varies from one research site to another, then
 the accuracy and comparability of self-reported drug use data are
 suspect. This project involved an experiment conducted in three DUF
 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. Further, results from the experiment had potential implications
 for procedures used in the DUF program's successor, the Arrestee Drug
Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program.
description: 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, Detroit, and
 Houston who were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental
 cells. Cell A represented the typical DUF protocol in which
 interviewers administered the standard consent and requested the urine
 specimen after the interview had been completed. In Cell B,
 researchers also administered the standard consent, but asked for the
 specimen prior to conducting the interview. Cells C and D used the
 enhanced informed consent and asked for the specimen after or before
 the interview, respectively. Data collection was divided into two
 phases. During the first phase, arrestees were randomly assigned to
 Cells A or C, both of which required the collection of the specimen
 after the interview. After Phase I was completed, collection began for
 Cells B and D, where the urine specimen was collected before the
 interview. Four scripts were prepared representing the four
 experimental conditions. A single script was used for each arrestee
 approached, which automatically assigned the arrestee to one of the
 four cells. To randomize the two scripts for each phase, they were
 first photocopied so that the scripts alternated. The sheets were then
 broken into smaller stacks and shuffled by picking up varying numbers
 of sheets from each stack and merging them together. The shuffling
 step was then repeated several times. The scripts were constructed so
 that each guided the interviewer through the sequence of steps to be
 taken for the experimental condition assigned to the arrestee being
 interviewed. The experiment was designed so that the only variability
 across the interviews was the manipulation of informed consent and
 sequence of requesting the urine specimen. All other procedures of a
 standard DUF collection were followed. The DUF data processing
 contractor merged the interview data and urine test results and
 forwarded the merged data file to Center for Substance Abuse Research
 (CESAR) staff. CESAR staff constructed the final analysis file by
 merging the data file from the DUF contractor with the CESAR data
 containing variables denoting the cells to which the arrestee had been
 assigned and responses to additional questions about the experiment
 recorded on the script sheet. 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.
description: Variables specific to this project include the
 experimental condition to which the arrestee 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.
description: Response Rates: There were no differences in the interview or
 urine specimen response rates across the four conditions. Between 80
 and 85 percent of all arrestees approached agreed to be interviewed
 and between 88 and 92 percent of the participants in the four
conditions provided a urine specimen.
description: Presence of Common Scales: None.
description: Sites were chosen to represent different interviewing
conditions and to fit with the experiment's data collection schedule.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Experiment to Enhance the Reporting of Drug Use by Arrestees in Cleveland, Detroit, and Houston, 1997
description: Booked adult arrestees in Cleveland, Detroit, and Houston
in 1997.
description: Users are encouraged to review the documentation
for the 1997 DUF data collection for the methodology and sampling used
for the standard DUF interview protocol.The user guide and the
codebook and data collection instruments are provided by ICPSR as
Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The PDF file format was
developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF
reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how
to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web
site.