The paper demonstrates how vignettes can be very useful research tools yielding valuable data when studying people's attitudes, perceptions and beliefs in social and nursing research.

Vignettes are stories generated from a range of sources including previous research findings. They make reference to important factors in the study of perceptions, beliefs and attitudes. Vignettes have primarily been used by psychologists in North America and used in quantitative surveys but more recently they have been used in a small number of qualitative studies. Drawing from a range of studies in the social sciences this paper considers the value of vignettes together with the difficulties associated with the technique. It introduces the technique in a study that explores drug injectors' perceptions of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) risk and safer behaviour inside and outside the prison system.

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