ATTITUDES TOWARD NEEDLE SHARING AMONG INJECTION-DRUG USERS - COMBINING QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS

Ethnographers working with injection drug users in U.S. AIDS preventio n projects have found that these drug users generally prefer not to us e each other's needles and do not conceive of needle ''sharing'' (tran sfer) as a key dimension of their identity. To date, these findings ha ve been based primarily on qualitative ethnographic methods. We operat ionalized injection drug users' values toward needle transfer and admi nistered a questionnaire to 276 active drug injectors recruited in 199 3 for the Dayton/Columbus, Ohio, AIDS Prevention Research Project Abou t 71% of the sample were African American, 28.6% were white, and 77.9% were male. The results generally confirm the qualitative evidence. Fo r example 96% disagreed with the statement: ''When shooting up with ot her people, I feel like I have to use the same outfit everyone else us es.'' Only 16.3% perceived new needles were inaccesible, while 72.8% f eared carrying needles because of drug paraphernalia laws. This study demonstrates the value of combining qualitative and quantitative metho ds in AIDS prevention research.