Prevention Services for HIV+ Patients Methods

These surveys have been designed and tested by CAPS scientists and are made available for use by HIV prevention program planners and designers.

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Warning: Survey needs vary from population to population and project to project. Please consider carefully the needs of your particular intervention before using one of these instruments. We encourage researchers and service providers to use these instruments, adapting and modifying as you see fit. Please cite CAPS as the source in any presented or published work, and, if the instruments were modified in any way from their original (as downloaded from the CAPS Web site) please note that in any presentations.

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Instruments for Prevention Services for HIV+ Patients

The following exit survey instruments were developed to assess frequency and variation of prevention services as reported by HIV positive patients at Ryan White-funded clinics across the US.

Reliability and Validity

This instrument is in a preliminary stage. Therefore, reliability, validity, and scoring systems are not available. The instrument was not designed to have psychometric properties that would enable its use outside of the immediate research setting of the study for which it was designed; however, it is posted in case that provides a platform for other researchers to develop new instruments.

Methods

Exit surveys were conducted in 16 Ryan White funded clinics across the country to 618 HIV-infected patients as they left routine visits with their primary care providers. The inclusion criteria were HIV-positive status, patient at the HIV primary care clinic, and able to provide informed consent. The number of patients surveyed ranged from 9 to 69 (mean=39) depending on the patient volume at each clinic and the number of patients who agreed to be surveyed within one-week field visits. Fifty-six (9%) of the exit interviews were conducted in Spanish and the remainder in English. These surveys were anonymous and pre-coded with participant identification codes. Participants received a $10.00 stipend for their participation in this 20 minutes survey. Participants were either recruited directly by interviewers from UCSF or referred by clinic staff, depending on the setting and the confidentiality procedures at each clinic. The exit surveys were formatted using Teleforms and faxed into a database housed on a web server.

Computer Based techniques for quantitative data collection for RWPP

A standardized data management system was used to collect, transfer, store, and edit data for the duration of this project. All components of the data system either read or wrote to a Microsoft SQL Server database. The survey instrument was modified to be machine readable using Cardiff Teleform Software, and all scannable forms were manually filled in by interviewers at the time of the interview, submitted via fax, and identified and evaluated by Teleform Reader. A data verifier then correctly entered any data in fields that the software had difficulty reading. A data querying component, consisting of a custom-written Visual Basic program, then queried the database for problems and generated a table with a record of each problem found. Quantitative interviewers underwent group and individual training to access data queries and modify errors made in survey collection. An audit trail was automatically created for each change made to any field in the database. The final SQL database was then directly read by SAS (Statistical Analysis Software) via an ODBC connection for data analysis. These methods of quality control and assurance ensured data that was of high caliber and timely.