Features of using qualitative interviews with injection drug users

This article is dedicated to some features of using qualitative interviews when interviewing injection drug users. The main purpose of this article is to give young researchers and all social scientists some important hints and guidelines that would help them when using qualitative interviews for studying injection drug users. In the first part of the article authors make a literature review concerning specifics and advantages of using qualitative methods for studying specific groups or categories in sociology. However, there are many qualitative methods besides interview, that can be used for studying these groups (focus-groups, observation, content analysis, etc.), authors focus their attention on qualitative interviews as one of the most universal ones, considering its wide-spread use and advantages. In the second part of the article authors reveal and stress some major points on every stage of qualitative interview: preparation, literature review, methodology development, respondent recruiting, interviewing and analysis. Some of the major points are the understanding of the social and cultural context in which the studied group lives, always paying attention to the senses and meanings that respondent give to concepts that are important to the research, the importance of trust for the injection drug users due to the illegality of their actions that is crucial on both recruitment and interviewing stage, ethical issues concerning confidentiality and anonymity, etc. Also researches in this area include such components as practical recommendations and the ways or steps that could be taken to solve problems related to research problematic. Despite concentrating on the use of one particular method for studying people who use injection drugs, hints and guidelines given in this article can be applied to a wider list of specific respondent’s categories and can even be useful when choosing similar methods.