Assessing the Consequences of Using Self-report Data to Determine the Correlates of HIV Status: Conditional and Marginal Approaches

Abstract

This article examines whether relationships between individual characteristics and HIV status can be identified when self-report data are used as a proxy for HIV serotest results. The analyses use data obtained from HIV serotests and face-to-face interviews with 7,256 out-of-treatment drug users in ten sites from 1992 to 1998. Relationships between 17 individual characteristics and HIV status (measured both by self-report and serotest results) were determined by (a) comparing and evaluating the fit of both standard and "nonstandard" loglinear models, and (b) evaluating the fit of marginal homogeneity models. The loglinear analyses showed that HIV serostatus was related to individual characteristics in 38 percent of the relationships. In most cases, the strength of the relationships between HIV status and individual characteristics did not differ when HIV status was measured with self-report data.