Does the calendar method enhance drug use reporting among Portland arrestees?

Abstract

While a plethora of research has ascertained that respondents under‐report their recent use of illicit drugs, few studies have attempted to improve the validity of self‐reported drug use. The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) Program is a federally funded drug use surveillance system that has been collecting data from arrestees since 1987. In 2000, the ADAM Program fielded a new data collection instrument that uses a calendar method to enhance the reporting of personal drug use. To date, however, no research has assessed the degree to which this calendar method has improved drug use reporting among ADAM arrestees. To address this limitation, urinalysis results and 30‐day self‐report measures for marijuana, crack cocaine, powder cocaine, and heroin use collected in Portland in 1999 are compared to identical drug use measures collected in 2000. In addition, kappa statistics for marijuana, crack cocaine, powder cocaine, and heroin use are generated for each of the two time frames. Results indicate that, despite virtually identical drug‐positive rates within the two samples of arrestees, the introduction of the calendar method in 2000 had no significant effect on the reporting of recent marijuana, crack cocaine, powder cocaine, and heroin use. Implications for the ADAM Program and survey methodology are discussed.

• ADAM
• self‐report
• validity