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Abstract:
This
paper presents the results of a study designed to assess the representativeness
of realized samples of recent arrestees selected for the Arrestee Drug
Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program in Anchorage, Alaska. Because one of the
most important goals of the ADAM program is to produce scientific information
on the prevalence of alcohol and drug use behaviors among arrestees that
is generalizable to an entire local arrestee population, establishing
the representativeness of realized samples (or isolating inherent biases)
is an essential first step to meaningful use of these data to address
locally defined problems.
In order to determine
the reasonableness of inferences grounded in realized samples of ADAM
respondents, an analysis was done comparing various characteristics between
each stage of the sample selection process including the census of eligible
arrestee population, the designed ADAM arrestee sample, arrestees available
for interview, arrestees actually interviewed (“realized”
sample), and arrestees that provided urine sample (“realized”
sample). If the realized samples are similar to the census we can have
a greater degree of confidence in our capacity to describe the population
of Anchorage arrestees using ADAM data. Also, if it happens that departures
are detected between realized samples and the arrestee census we are better
positioned to condition the inferences made by integrating these discerned
biases into our conclusions.
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