Qualitative Methods In Drug Abuse And Hiv Research

Recoge: 1. Injecting drug use: associated harms - 2. Qualitative methods in drugs research - 3. The role of qualitative research - 4. Understanding injecting risk behaviour - 5. Understanding sexual risk behaviour.

This monograph is the product of the decision of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) to launch a project in 1996 to obtain a comprehensive overview of qualitative research on drugs in Europe. The opening section highlights the multiple roles of qualitative research in understanding and responding to drug use. Part II addresses the impact of qualitative research on policy-making. Part III provides examples of research conducted in European Union cities that has been specifically designed to identify and verify new trends in drug use. Part IV on risk behaviour demonstrates how qualitative research methods have made a considerable contribution to the knowledge and understanding of health risks associated with drug injecting. Subsequent sections consider the theme of social exclusion, drug markets, and drug services evaluation. The final section is given over to qualitative research on drug use within a global research agenda. It reveals the scale of qualitative drug research varies greatly between countries, that little is published in the drug-specific scientific journals and that high quality work often appears to fail to influence policy. The monograph concludes that a comprehensive approach should include the training of individual experts and research teams and exchanges of experience between researchers across and beyond Europe.

This authoritative handbook reviews the most widely-used methods for studying the use and abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs. Its thorough coverage spans the range of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method approaches to documenting and measuring the complex psychological, behavioral, and physical experience of substance misuse and dependence, to ensure valid, useful results. Experts discuss special issues and considerations for conducting ethical research with specialized populations, including youth, inmates, and the LGBT community. Throughout these chapters, contributors demonstrate the multidisciplinary nature of substance abuse research, with emphasis on professional ethics and the critical role of research in developing best practices and effective policy for prevention and treatment. Among the topics covered: · Transdisciplinary research perspective: a theoretical framework for substance abuse research · Longitudinal methods in substance use research · Considerations in blending qualitative and quantitative components in substance abuse research · The use of biological measures in social research on drug misuse · Using surveys to study substance use behavior · Applications of GIS to inform substance abuse research and interventions · Evaluating substance use prevention and treatment programs Research Methods in the Study of Substance Abuse is an essential resource for health services and public health professionals, policymakers, and researchers working and training in the field of addiction. It encourages the rigor and understanding necessary to address widespread social and public health concerns.

Delve into the uncharted territory of the “hidden” drug addict--users who are not in treatment, not incarcerated, and not officially accessible for research purposes through traditional means. AIDS and Community-Based Drug Intervention Programs describes short-term interventions used to reduce the odds that these drug users will get infected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The book explains new methods that are being developed, such as targeted sampling, social network analysis, geomapping, and other amalgams of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, that need to be forged to overcome the challenges of the war against AIDS. The research described in this important book was conducted under the Cooperative Agreement for AIDS Community-Based Outreach/Intervention Research funding mechanism of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Chapters include research on several ethnic groups, including Alaska natives, Puerto Ricans, and Navaho teens. AIDS and Community-Based Drug Treatment Programs, written by experts in the field, is a broad-based treatment of the subject by those who are actually doing the work in the trenches. Authors cover topics such as: the use of goal-oriented counseling and peer support to reduce HIV/AIDS risk quantitative and qualitative methods to assess behavioral change among injection drug users (IDUs) the importance of sampling from hidden populations in research a public health model for reducing AIDS-related risk behavior among IDUs and their sexual partners characteristics of female sexual partners of IDUs strategies used to implement random sampling strategies in the recruitment of out-of-treatment crack and IDUs ethnographic analysis of intravenous drug use analysis of contact tracing strategies employed to combat the AIDS epidemic the use of pile sorts to enhance other tools used by drug prevention programsAIDS and Community-Based Drug Intervention Programs is full of current research and useful information for professionals interested in learning about strategies for conducting HIV/AIDS research among hard-to-reach populations. Substance abuse researchers, treatment professionals, and people involved in AIDS prevention programs, state and county health departments, and criminal justice systems will find much relevant and important information to use in their daily work.

Recoge: 1. Injecting drug use: associated harms - 2. Qualitative methods in drugs research - 3. The role of qualitative research - 4. Understanding injecting risk behaviour - 5. Understanding sexual risk behaviour.