Beginning in 1996, the National Institute of
Justice (NIJ) initiated a major redesign of its multi-site
drug-monitoring program, the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) system (DRUG
USE FORECASTING IN 24 CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES, 1987-1997 [ICPSR
9477]). The program was retitled Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring
(ADAM). ADAM extended DUF in the number of sites and improved the
quality and generalizability of the data. The redesign was implemented
in the first quarter of 2000. The original goal remained the same --
to determine the extent of drug use in the booked arrestee population
(that is, arrestees brought to fixed booking facilities where digital
or ink fingerprinting and other processing took place) in a defined
area at specified points each year. However, the redesigned sampling
protocol and instrument extended ADAM's goals in the following ways:
(1) to provide a suitable probability-based sample of jails and
arrestees to support prevalence estimates of drug use and related
behaviors in each ADAM site, (2) to provide accurate estimates with
confidence intervals that permit tests of the significance of drug use
trends, (3) to create a standardized dataset on arrestees in multiple
jurisdictions to allow cross-site comparisons, (4) to expand the scope
of DUF data to include other areas of concern (treatment history,
dependency/abuse assessment, drug markets), (5) to provide a platform
for distinguishing between arrest and drug use practices and for
drawing inferences about the total population of hardcore or heavy
drug users, including those not in the current ADAM sample, (6) to
provide data for policy responses to substance abuse issues both
locally and nationally, (7) to investigate drug markets or purchases,
including data on characteristics of the market, conditions of
purchase or exchange, and prices paid, (8) to assess risk of alcohol
and/or drug dependency, and drug and mental health treatment
experiences, and (9) to use common definitions and, where possible,
identical questions and response categories to allow meaningful links
between ADAM and other national data systems.
The ADAM program in 2001 used an expanded adult
instrument which was first implemented in 2000. This instrument was
used in adult booking facilities for male (Part 1) and female (Part 2)
arrestees. The juvenile data (Part 3) used the juvenile instrument
from previous years. The ADAM program also continued to use
probability-based sampling for the adult male population, a procedure
initiated in 2000. Therefore, the adult male sample includes weights,
generated through post-sampling stratification of the data. The shift
to sampling of the adult male population in 2000 required that all
sites move toward a common catchment area definition, generally a
county. The 33 ADAM sites for the current year included Albany, New
York (Capital Area), Albuquerque, New Mexico (Bernalillo County),
Anchorage, Alaska (Anchorage Borough), Birmingham, Alabama (Jefferson
County), Charlotte, North Carolina (Charlotte Metro), Chicago,
Illinois (Cook County), Cleveland, Ohio (Cuyahoga County), Dallas,
Texas (Dallas County), Denver, Colorado (Denver County), Des Moines,
Iowa (Polk County), Detroit, Michigan (Wayne County), Honolulu, Hawaii
(Oahu), Indianapolis, Indiana (Marion County), Kansas City, Missouri
(Jackson County), Laredo, Texas (Webb County), Las Vegas, Nevada
(Clark County), Minneapolis, Minnesota (Hennepin County), New Orleans,
Louisiana (Orleans Parish), New York, New York (Manhattan Borough),
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (Oklahoma County), Omaha, Nebraska (Douglas
County), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (County of Philadelphia), Phoenix,
Arizona (Maricopa County), Portland, Oregon (Multnomah County),
Sacramento, California (Sacramento County), Salt Lake City, Utah (Salt
Lake County), San Antonio, Texas (Bexar County), San Diego, California
(San Diego County), San Jose, California (Santa Clara County),
Seattle, Washington (King County), Spokane, Washington (Spokane
County), Tucson, Arizona (Pima County), and Tulsa, Oklahoma (Tulsa
County). The core instrument for the adult cases was supplemented by a
facesheet, which was used to collect demographic and charge
information from official records. Core instruments were used to
collect self-report information from respondents. Both the adult and
juvenile instruments were administered to persons arrested and booked
on local or state charges relevant to the jurisdiction (i.e., not
federal or out-of-county charges) within the past 48 hours. Trained
interviewers used a paper and pencil instrument in a face-to-face
setting in a secure and reasonably private area of the booking
facility. The adult interview took a median of 20 minutes, with a
slightly longer mean. The juvenile interview took an average of 5
minutes. Responses were recorded by the interviewer at the time of the
interview. At the completion of the interview, the arrestee was asked
to voluntarily provide a urine specimen. The adult male and female
data reflect all the arrestees selected for an interview from the
booking logs, including those for whom only facesheet information was
collected. The final sample for each adult data file, however, is the
subset of arrestees that accepted and completed an interview. An
external lab used the Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay Testing (EMIT)
protocols to test for the presence of ten drugs or metabolites of the
drug in the urine sample. All amphetamine positives were confirmed by
gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) to determine whether
methamphetamine was used. Local booking facilities provided a census
of all adult males arrested in each facility collecting data for the
time period of data collection in the target county. The census data
are not in the public file but were used to develop sampling weights
for the male data.
A probability sampling plan was used for adult male
collection in all sites in 2001, which assured that the data truly
represented the male arrestee population, not simply an unspecified
proportion of that population. The goal of sampling was to represent
with known probability the likelihood that a male arrestee was
selected for an interview and to use that information to weight each
sample case. Additionally, ADAM's goal was to represent all days of
the week and all times of the day so as to avoid biasing the male
sample against those types of arrests and arrestees who are brought in
during the period interviewers were not collecting data (morning,
after midnight, "slower" days of the week). The final sampling goal
was to represent all the facilities in the target county -- small,
large, suburban, urban, quick release, etc. -- again to represent all
types of offenders arrested and booked on local and state charges
within the past 48 hours. Each ADAM site adopted one of four designs
for sampling jails. ADAM resource constraints, the number of jails in
each county, and how male arrestees were processed through those jails
dictated the resulting plan for each site. The single jail design
applied to sites where all arrestees were booked into a single jail
and were being held pending pretrial release or trial. In the single
jail design, the site collected its entire male sample in the single
booking facility in the county. For counties with a few booking
facilities (typically six or fewer), a stratified jail design was
used. ADAM interviewers sampled arrestees in each of those jails and
were assigned to jails so that the site's male sample was distributed
across all booking facilities in the county and was roughly
proportionate to size based on bookings. For counties that had many
jails, ADAM adopted a stratified cluster sample design through which
facilities in the county were clustered by size into a small number of
strata. The site's sample was distributed across one or two facilities
in each cluster, proportionate to size. This design affords estimates
for all jails even though only some jails were included in the
sample. Finally, for situations where a large number of jails quickly
transfer a selected group of arrestees to a central holding facility,
ADAM adopted a feeder jail design wherein interviewers sampled
arrestees as they were booked into the central facility. Interviewees
selected at the central facility represented arrestees at each of the
"feeder" jails. However, only a certain type of offender (typically
those charged with serious crimes) were transferred. Therefore,
interviewers also went to selected feeder jails to sample male
arrestees who did not get transferred. ADAM created a process to
sample male arrestees within a jail that were booked at any time of
the day or any day of the week with a known probability of selection
by splitting the booked population into two parts. The stock comprised
males who had been booked before the interviewer arrived at the
jail. Interviews were, in general, conducted from 4 p.m. to
midnight. The flow comprised males who were booked while the
interviewer was stationed at the jail. Flow data collection began the
moment the data collection team entered a facility and represented the
period of the day when bookings were at the highest point. Cases were
selected throughout the period as they were available from booking,
with the interviewer selecting the case booked closest to when his/her
previous interview was completed. This method insured that the
interviews moved throughout the shift and thus represented the full
time period. For the same reason, when an interview target number was
reached before the end of the shift, interviewing continued until the
time period was over. Flow cases were selected from booking log or
records data maintained by law enforcement in the facility. The
booking log was also the source of the stock sampling. The
interviewers in this case arrayed the male arrestees listed as booked
during the non-interview times chronologically and took cases on an
interval determined by the target number of stock cases for that
day. Facesheets were filled out for all males who would be in the
sample regardless of whether they were eventually
interviewed. Arrestees selected in the sampling were not always still
in the facility, making those remaining a potential biased estimate of
the true male population characteristics. This bias was addressed in
ADAM through weighting of cases. A convenience sample was used when
collecting data from the adult female (32 sites) and juvenile
populations (8 sites). The sample of sites was not a probability-based
sample. In other words, both DUF and the subsequent ADAM sites were
not sampled from a list of counties in the United States. They were
selected through applications of sites that were interested in
participating.
All persons arrested and booked on local and state charges
(i.e., not federal and out-of-county charges) in any of the 33 ADAM
counties in the United States during 2001.
Individual arrestees.
A double-sided facesheet was used to collect
information from administrative records on all adult arrestees
selected for an interview. The ADAM adult interview and juvenile
interview instruments were used to record information from voluntary,
anonymous, and confidential interviews with all male and female adult
and juvenile arrestees in the sample available for an interview within
48 hours of the time of arrest. Urine tests were used to collect
clinical records data in order to detect the presence of several drugs
in specimens provided by the interviewee at the conclusion of the
interview.
administrative records data,
clinical data,
medical records,
survey data
For the adult data (male and female, Parts 1 and
2), variables from the facesheet include arrest precinct, ZIP code of
arrest location, ZIP code of respondent's address, respondent's gender
and race, three most serious arrest charges, sample source (stock,
flow, other), interview status (including reason an individual
selected in the sample was not interviewed), language of instrument
used, and the number of hours since arrest. Demographic information
from the core instrument include respondent's age, ethnicity,
residency, education, employment, health insurance coverage, marital
status, and telephone access. Variables from the calendar provide
information on inpatient and outpatient substance abuse treatment,
inpatient mental health treatment, arrests and incarcerations, heavy
alcohol use, use of marijuana, crack/rock cocaine, powder cocaine,
heroin, methamphetamine, and other drug (ever and previous 12 months),
age of first use of the above six drugs and heavy alcohol use, drug
dependency in the previous 12 months, characteristics of drug
transactions in past 30 days, use of marijuana, crack/rock cocaine,
powder cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine in past 30 days, seven
days, and 72 hours, heavy alcohol use in past 30 days, and secondary
drug use of 15 other drugs in the past 72 hours. Urine test results
are provided for 11 drugs -- marijuana, cocaine, opiates,
phencyclidine (PCP), benzodiazepines (Valium), proposyphene (Darvon),
methadone, methaqualone, barbiturates, amphetamines, and
methamphetamine. The adult data files include several derived
variables. The male data also include four sampling weights, and
stratum IDs and percents. For the juvenile data (Part 3), demographic
variables include age, race, sex, educational attainment, employment
status, and living circumstances. Other variables cover each
arrestee's self-reported use of 15 drugs (alcohol, tobacco, marijuana,
powder cocaine, crack, heroin, PCP, amphetamines, barbiturates,
quaaludes, methadone, crystal methamphetamine, Valium, LSD, and
inhalants). For each drug type, arrestees reported whether they had
ever used the drug, age of first use, whether they had used the drug
in the past 30 days and past 72 hours, number of days they used the
drug in past month, whether they tried to cut down or quit using the
drug, if they were successful, whether they felt dependent on the
drug, whether they were receiving treatment for the drug, whether they
had received treatment for the drug in the past, and whether they
thought they could use treatment for that drug. Additional variables
include whether the juveniles had ever injected drugs, whether they
were influenced by drugs when they allegedly committed the crime for
which they were arrested, whether they had been to an emergency room
for drug-related incidents, and if so, if in the past 12 months, and
arrests and charges in the past 12 months. As with the adult data,
urine test results are also provided. Finally, variables on precinct
(precinct of arrest) and law (penal law code associated with the crime
for which the juvenile was arrested) are also provided for use by
local law enforcement officials at each site.
The ability to provide a true response rate will
not be available until the 2002 data collection. However, the data do
contain information on interview and urine specimen status. For the
male data, 55.1 percent agreed to an interview, 12.2 percent declined,
22.5 percent were not available at the time of their selection, and
10.2 percent were not approached. Of the male arrestees who were
interviewed, 90.5 percent provided a urine sample. For the female
data, 58.4 percent agreed to be interviewed, 11.5 percent declined,
20.6 percent were not available, and 9.5 percent were not
approached. Of the female arrestees who were interviewed, 91.4 percent
provided a urine specimen. Response rates varied across sites but
generally fall in the 80 percent to 95 percent range. This includes
agreement to the interview and providing a urine sample.
None.