Software Development--Drug Abuse Ethnographic Research

Since the mid-1970's, information on current and emerging drug abuse patterns and trends have beenepidemiologic data derived primarily from national probability samples and population-based surveys.however, there has been increasing interest in use of data generated through ethnographic methods toof drug abusing behavior. While surveys typically answer questions about the nature and extent of dtoward drugs, ethnographic studies and contextual descriptions give qualitative meaning to underlyinpersons engaged in or directly affected by drug abuse in various settings. To realize the full potefrom these studies, careful analysis and quantification of results from unstructured interviews mustethnographers. Currently, a variety of commercial-off-the-shelf software (COTS) are available to asfrom focus groups, ethnographic interviews and other qualitative data collection methodologies, butsupport the processing and analysis of qualitative research needs. The burden of data entry of tranmarkers, organizing coded transcript data for analysis, and interpreting results is itself cumbersomovercome these inherent weaknesses in existing COTS applications typically used to support qualitatiapproach to data entry, transcript processing, and analysis was sought in Phase I. Phase II developcompletion of all design features found to be feasible and likely to find a receptive user base in tethnographer and academic setting sinitially targeted as markets.