A NATIONAL HOUSEHOLD SURVEY OF DRUG MISUSE IN BRITAIN - A DECADE OF DEVELOPMENT

Like most other countries, Britain has lagged behind the United States in developing a fully-fledged national household survey of drug misus e. Building on some initial efforts in the early 1990s, the 1994 Briti sh Crime Survey (BCS) and the 1995 National Drugs Campaign Survey (NDC S) and various other large-scale household surveys have provided fresh insights into drugs prevalence and patterns of misuse. These developm ents-their achievements and their limitations-are reviewed here. Parti cular attention is paid to the development of self-report methodologie s: both the BCS and the NDCS rely on interviewees personally entering their responses on to laptop computers. Some of the main findings of t hese surveys are also briefly discussed.