The preparedness to share injecting equipment: an analysis using vignettes.

This paper reports on the use of vignettes to study drug injectors' preparedness to share injecting equipment. Separate vignettes referring to borrowing and passing on injecting equipment have been submitted to 505 injecting drug users in Glasgow. Injectors were asked to identify their own likely response in each of the situations described within the vignettes. It was shown that even among those injectors not reporting any actual sharing in the last 6 months a significant proportion would still be prepared to share injecting equipment within certain situations. The preparedness to share injecting equipment was seen to be influenced by such factors as social distance, sex and length of time injecting. It is suggested that even in situations where drug injectors may have modified their behaviour in the direction of lower levels of reported sharing, a propensity to share may remain. This suggests the continuing need to provide injectors with easy access to sterile injecting equipment; in addition, services working with injecting drug users may need to focus not only upon actual sharing behaviour but also upon what we have described here as the preparedness to share. Indeed, the latter dimension should stand as a warning to services of the potential for sharing injecting equipment to increase in the future.