Reisinger Heather Schacht
Friends Research Institute, Social Research Center, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Qual Health Res. 2004 Feb;14(2):241-58. doi: 10.1177/1049732303260670.
In spite of a history of collaboration between epidemiology and qualitative research, the mix of these two perspectives is not well developed in the substance use field. Part of the reason for the difficult match is that qualitative research often adds issues of context and meaning that complicate the epidemiological data of interest. In the substance use field, epidemiological indicators tend to focus on a single drug, but the context typically involves persons who use multiple illicit and licit substances in a variety of ways that change over time. In this article, the author describes four adolescents in an outpatient substance abuse treatment center to provide context and insight into the lives behind the epidemiological indicators. Studying a site of epidemiological data collection ethnographically is yet another way to build collaboration between epidemiology and qualitative research.
尽管流行病学与定性研究之间有着合作的历史，但在物质使用领域，这两种视角的融合并未得到充分发展。这种难以匹配的部分原因在于，定性研究常常会引入背景和意义等问题，从而使相关的流行病学数据变得复杂。在物质使用领域，流行病学指标往往聚焦于单一药物，但实际背景通常涉及那些以多种方式使用多种非法和合法物质且使用方式随时间变化的人群。在本文中，作者描述了一家门诊物质滥用治疗中心的四名青少年，以提供背景信息并深入了解流行病学指标背后的生活。以人种志的方式研究流行病学数据的收集地点，是建立流行病学与定性研究之间合作的另一种途径。
