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Full Text Available
Open Access / OK to Reproduce
Peer Reviewed
Objective
A study by Pivovarova and Stein found people in treatment for heroin use preferred person-first terms. Aim one of our study is to add to knowledge of term preferences among people in the US who use heroin by replicating the Pivovarova and Stein study with a sample of people who use heroin but are not in treatment. Aim two is to extend findings with insights from qualitative analysis.
Findings/Key points
The qualitative analysis revealed that only a third of our sample indicated that changes in language were helpful, while another third indicated that changing the terms did not result in changing attitudes towards people who use drugs. While stigmatizing language should be avoided, language is constantly evolving and subject to political trends. More emphasis is needed on changing attitudes toward people who use drugs.
Design/methods
Qualitative questions probed the meaning of terms and the impact of changing language. We recruited 206 participants between November 2019 and May 2021. We compare the results of the treatment sample with a not-in-treatment sample.
