Self-Reported Drug Use: Results of Selected Empirical Investigations of Validity

Abstract

This chapter reviews the literature on factors related to quality of self-report data on drug use and discusses two series of empirical studies investigating the quality of those data. One set of analyses examined the quality of the longitudinal retrospective self-report from narcotics addicts, including validity of recent narcotics use, reliability of various measures, stability of relationships among these measures, and pattern reliability among latent constructs. Results contribute strongly to confidence in the validity of the relationships among these data derived from addicts' self-report. The second set of analyses focused on validity of self-reported drug use among high-risk groups, including samples from sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinics, hospital emergency rooms (ERs), and jails. Results suggest that the accuracy of self-report of recent drug use varies by the sample sources, drug types, and subject characteristics. Targeting these high-risk groups may improve prevalence estimation. The chapter concludes that empirical validation of self-report is always necessary to enhance the utility of collected self-report data and provide means of controlling for potential biases.

Does Social Desirability Confound the Assessment of Self-Reported Measures of Well-Being and Metacognitive Efficiency in Young and Older Adults?

“…Each of these indicators has been previously shown to be associated with drug use reporting (Office of Applied Studies, 2000), the validity of drug use reporting (Fendrich et al, 1999;Hser, 1997) and the CM measure (Bradburn and Sudman (1979). For purposes of these analyses, age and education were collapsed into ordinal measures.…”

Stimulant Use, Religiosity, and the Odds of Developing or Maintaining an Alcohol Use Disorder Over Time

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Case Management: Steadfast Resource for Addressing Linkage to Care and Prevention With Hospitalized HIV-Infected Crack Users

“…Prior research has found that the accuracy of self-reported data from drug users depends on specific subject characteristics, including types of drugs used by the sample (Hser, 1997). Studies that compared self-report data from crack users to their urinalysis results found that about half of the users who tested positive for drugs admitted to using drugs (Lu, 2001).…”