Forgetting as a cause of incomplete reporting of sexual and drug injectionpartners

Background and Objectives: Partner notification and social network studies of infectious disease often involve interviewing people to elicit their sex ual and/or drug injection partners. Incomplete reporting of partners in the se contexts would significantly hamper efforts to understand and control th e spread of sexually transmitted diseases, HIV, and other infections, There are many reasons why individuals might not name their partners in intervie ws, This study provides a comprehensive assessment of forgetting as a cause of incomplete reporting of sexual and injection partners. Study Design: One hundred fifty-six persons in Seattle,Washington, at presu med high risk for HIV recalled their sexual and/or injection partners in tw o interviews separated by 1 week or 3 months. Results: Repeated, nonspecific prompting elicited, on average, 10% of all p artners recalled in an interview Subjects displayed substantial forgetting of partners across partner types, recall periods, and four independent meas urement approaches, with up to 72% of partners forgotten. The number of par tners recalled and subjective assessment of forgetting are moderate to good predictors of the number of partners forgotten. Recalled and forgotten par tners do not differ dramatically on any of several partner variables, Conclusions: Forgetting is a primary factor in the incomplete reporting of sexual and injection partners. Interviewers should prompt repeatedly to max imize recall of partners. Reinterviewing is currently the best method avail able for identifying partners as completely as possible and should be focus ed on individuals who report many partners and/or sense they have other par tners they cannot recall.