Arentoft Alyssa, Van Dyk Kathleen, Thames April D, Sayegh Philip, Thaler Nicholas, Schonfeld Daniel, LaBrie Joseph, Hinkin Charles H
a Department of Psychology , California State University , Northridge , CA , USA.
b Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences , University of California-Los Angeles , Los Angeles , CA , USA.
AIDS Care. 2016;28(3):370-5. doi: 10.1080/09540121.2015.1090538. Epub 2015 Oct 8.
Researchers often rely on self-report measures to assess sensitive health-risk behaviors in HIV+ individuals, yet the accuracy of self-report has been questioned, particularly when inquiring about behaviors that may be embarrassing, risky, and/or taboo. We compared an anonymous reporting method - the unmatched count technique (UCT) - to direct self-report (DSR) in order to assess reporting differences for several health-risk behaviors related to medication adherence and sexual risk. Contrary to hypotheses, the UCT only produced a significantly higher estimated base rate for one sensitive behavior: reporting medication adherence to one's physician, which may have been contextually primed by our study design. Our results suggest that anonymous reporting methods may not increase disclosure compared to DSR when assessing several health-risk behaviors in HIV+ research volunteers. However, our results also suggest that contextual factors should be considered and investigated further, as they may influence perception of sensitive behavior.
研究人员常常依靠自我报告措施来评估HIV阳性个体的敏感健康风险行为，然而自我报告的准确性受到了质疑，尤其是在询问那些可能令人尴尬、有风险和/或属于禁忌的行为时。我们将一种匿名报告方法——非匹配计数技术（UCT）——与直接自我报告（DSR）进行了比较，以评估与药物依从性和性风险相关的几种健康风险行为的报告差异。与假设相反，UCT仅在一种敏感行为上产生了显著更高的估计基线率：向医生报告药物依从情况，这可能是由我们的研究设计在情境上引发的。我们的结果表明，在评估HIV阳性研究志愿者的几种健康风险行为时，与直接自我报告相比，匿名报告方法可能不会增加披露。然而，我们的结果也表明，应考虑并进一步研究情境因素，因为它们可能会影响对敏感行为的认知。
