How Drug Abusers Organize Their Participation in HIV/AIDS Studies: Their Time and Their Place

Based upon process evaluations of two HIV/AID epidemiologic studies and one program evaluation, the authors focus on the subtle and culturally latent ways that respondents differentially make themselves available as research subjects. Our primary thesis is that injection drug users respond to opportunities to be interviewed and paid as a group as well as individuals. In which case, they influence as a group who is recruited for interviews. In this retrospective review, we show the ways that some IDUs respond differentially to research methods based on ways that they are organized in the larger community.