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A short questionnaire (IRQ) to assess injecting risk behaviour
G V Stimson1, S Jones, C Chalmers
1Department of Social Science and Medicine, Imperial College School of Medicine, University of London, UK.
Aim:
To develop a short injecting risk questionnaire (IRQ) to measure sharing of injecting equipment.
Design:
Matrix design with quota assignment, designed to compare the questionnaire when used by interview and self-completion, in agency and community settings, by agency staff and fieldworkers, with different injectors (age < 26 vs. 26+; male vs. female, opiate vs stimulant injectors), and in different geographical areas.
Settings:
Drug treatment and helping agencies, and community settings, in England.
Participants:
Drug users who had injected in the last 4 weeks.
Measurements:
Questions measured different aspects of equipment sharing. Questionnaire performance assessed by question acceptability, test-retest (parallel forms) reliability, inter-rater reliability, inter-instrument reliability, internal reliability, construct validity and internal collateral validity. Statistical tests included product moment correlation, principal components analysis, and Cronbach's alpha.
Findings:
The questionnaire was highly acceptable. Test-retest correlations were all high and significant, questions performed well in all conditions, with no differences by site (agency vs. out-of-contact), order (interview or self-completion first), administration (staff vs. fieldworker), elapsed time or subject characteristics. The questionnaire had high internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha > +0.86), and items measured a similar domain with all questions loading highly (> 0.32) on a single factor which accounted for > 42% of the variance. The complete IRQ elicited higher reports of equipment sharing (77%) than a single question (56%).
Conclusions:
IRQ performs well in a variety of settings, when administered in different ways to different kinds of IDUs. A single question on 'sharing' elicits fewer positive responses than the use of multiple questions about different sharing practices.
