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instructions. As there was no consistent reporting of difficulty with any of the adapted scale items, these were retained. The instructions were also retained in an attempt to use a scale as similar as possible to that used by the alcohol sub-sample. It was considered that any difficulty experienced with the instructions would not be unique to this substance group; caution could be exercised by requesting that respondents read the instructions carefully and seek assistance if necessary.
The revised scale was then administered to Sample 4, 118 individuals attending the Leeds Addiction Unit at various stages of their treatment for heroin addiction. These respondents were asked for their consent to complete a set of questionnaires while waiting for their appointment for initial assessment, for heroin detoxification or for out-patient treatment of dependence. The questionnaire battery comprised the Leeds Dependence Questionnaire (LDQ) (see Appendix 1), the adapted Impaired Control Scale (ICSdrg) described above (see Appendix 4), the adapted Coping Behaviours Inventory (CBIdrg) described in Chapter 6 (see Appendix 11), and six questions about recent use (see Appendix 5). Age and gender were recorded for each respondent. Complete questionnaire sets were obtained for 100 individuals and the two adapted questionnaires were completed by 118 individuals. Test re-test reliability analysis was conducted with a separate sample of 50 respondents attending the Leeds Addiction Unit at various stages of their treatment for heroin dependence. In agreement with Nick Heather, I thought that a number of the items referring to patterns of use might be potentially problematic for adaptation to users of heroin. Therefore, I interviewed a further small sample of 10 individuals as to their understanding of these particular items.
5.7.4 Results: sample characteristics
Respondents were 89 males (75% of the total) and 29 females (25% of the total) attending for assessment or treatment of heroin dependence; this was an identical gender ratio to that found in the heroin sub-sample of the main study Sample 6c (see Chapter 7). Mean age was 27.7 years (SD 6.3) with a range of 16 to 50, compared to a mean age of 25 for the heroin sub-sample of the main study. Forty-five per cent of the sample was abstinent from heroin and 33% were using heroin on a daily basis. A further 12% were using on one to three days of the week and 4.3% were using heroin between four and six days of the week (see Figure 5.1). Thus the typical patterns of heroin use in this sample were total abstinence or daily use.
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