Prevention Toolkit > CAPS Data Sets - Voluntary Counseling and Testing Study

CAPS Data Sets - Voluntary Counseling and Testing Study

1. In your manuscript include the following citations that describe the methods and the outcome of the original clinical trial:
   The Voluntary HIV-1 Counseling and Testing Efficacy Study Group. Efficacy of voluntary HIV-1 counselling and testing in individual and couples in Kenya, Tanzania, and Trinidad: a randomised trial. Lancet, 2000, 256, 103-112.
   The Voluntary HIV-1 Counseling and Testing Study Group. The Voluntary HIV-1 Counseling and Testing Efficacy Study: Design and Methods . AIDS and Behavior, 2000, 4(1), 5-14.
2. In your manuscript include the following acknowledgment:
   "The Voluntary HIV1 Counseling and Testing study was sponsored by UNAIDS/WHO, AIDSCAP/Family Health International and the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, University of California, San Francisco."
3. Send us copies of any published papers or publications that use this dataset. Copies of any papers or publications using this dataset should be sent to:
   Olga Grinstead, Ph.D. MPH
   Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS)
   50 Beale Street, Suite 1300
   San Francisco, CA 94105
4. If you discover any errors in the dataset or the dataset documentation, please provide this information to Dr. Grinstead via e-mail at olga.grinstead at ucsf.edu.
5. If requested to do so by the original study investigators, you will need to certify the destruction of the downloaded data file and any data files derived from the downloaded file.
6. Do not transfer the dataset to any third party;each user must download the original dataset.
7. Make no attempt to identify research participants.
   

INDEX OF FILES

***************************** * preliminary definitions * *****************************

I. DESCRIPTION OF DATA COLLECTION FORMS

I.A. 'UNIQUE' FORMS
'Unique' forms were administered only once to each participant during the course of the study. Each of these forms is very briefly described below.

"enrollment eligibility form.doc" This form collects information about participants at the beginning of the study to determine if they are eligible to enroll.

"baseline interview response form.doc" This form collects information about the enrolled participants at the first visit of the baseline wave. It askes a number of general questions, such as the participant's background, attitude, and sexual history.

"initial baseline visit form.doc" This form is given to the participants at the first visit in the baseline wave. It verifies that each participant did what was needed during that visit, such as giving blood samples and completing the HIC intervention.

"6-month interview response form.doc" This form collects information about the participants at the first visit of the 6-month wave. It askes a number of general questions, such as the participant's background, attitude, and sexual history.

"6-month STD site test.doc" This form contains information about the testing done at the first visit of the 6-month wave for STD performed at the site.

"6-month counselor's questionnaire.doc" This form collects information about the participants at the first visit of the 6-month wave. It askes a number of general questions, such as the participant's attitude, emotional fears, and recent positive and negative life events.

"12-month interview response form.doc" This form collects information about the participants at the first visit of the 12-month wave. It askes a number of general questions, such as the participant's background, attitude, and sexual history.

"12-month counselor's questionnaire.doc" This form collects information about the participants at the first visit of the 12-month wave. It askes a number of general questions, such as the participant's attitude, emotional fears, and recent positive and negative life events.

I.B. 'MULTIPLE' FORMS
'Multiple' forms are those forms that occur as many times as needed during the course of the study. These forms include the urine collection form, blood collection form, the return visit form, HIV serology form, and counseling contact form. The raw data from these forms are not explicitly included in the data set. However, the data from these forms were used to create summary variables that are included in the data set.

I.C. ELECTRONIC COPIES OF 'UNIQUE' FORMS
Electronic copies of the 'unique' forms used in the study to collect data are available to be copied along with copying the actual data. The forms are in Microsoft Word format, and are readable using Word97 on Windows NT 4.0 operating system. These Word files occupy a total of 481Kb.

II. RELATIONSHIP STATUS AND PARTNER TYPES

II.A. RELATIONSHIP STATUS
Participants' responses to the baseline, 6-month, and 12-month interview response forms were used to determine their relationship status at each measurement occasion. Married participants, whether by civil, religious, common, or customary law were assigned a relationship status of 'married'. Unmarried participants who reported having sexual intercourse with a 'boyfriend', 'girlfriend', or 'mistress' in the prior two months were assigned a relationship status of 'steady'. Unmarried participants who did not report any episode of sexual intercourse with a 'boyfriend', 'girlfriend', or 'mistress' in the prior two months were assigned a relationship status of 'single'.

II.B. TYPES OF SEXUAL PARTNERS
'Primary' partners are, for married participants, their spouse(s). For participants in steady relationships, primary partners refer to the boyfriend(s) or girlfriend(s). Single participants have no primary partner, by definition.

'Commercial' sex partners are partners who were defined either by the participant to be a commerical sex worker or by situations where goods or services were exchanged for sex with a partner who was not a spouse or steady partner. Note that commercial sex partners, whether male or female, could be 'buyers' or 'sellers' of sexual services.

'Other' partners are partners who are neither a primary partner or a commerical sex partner. 'Non-primary' partners are partners who are either commercial sex partners or 'other' partners.

**************** * other documentation files * ****************

"variable nomenclature.txt"
This file describes how variables were named.

"variable recodes.txt"
This file describes value recoding rules for variables included on 'unique' forms.

"created variables.txt"
This file describes three types of variables:

1. variables (such as the number of non-primary sex partners reported during the baseline interview) that were created from the responses of one or more questions in a given form,
2. variables (such as "language of interview" on the 6-month interview response form) that contain the responses to questions for which there were no question numbers on the relevent forms, and
3. variables were calculated across a number of different forms or during the administative process of the study that together offer basic background and administrative information about the participants.

"making ascii data (read).sas"
This file contains the necessary SAS commands to read vct.dat and create a SAS dataset in the work directory. These commands are very basic, so researchers utilizing other languages will have few if any problems modifying them to the other languages.

*********** * available data sets * ************

Across all sites and all forms, there are 4293 observations and 1571 variables. All files were compressed using winzip.exe.

note 1:
In addition to using winzip.exe, extra compression was done utilizing a SAS option ('compress=yes').

note 2:
To read the SAS transport file, use the following SAS commands to create a SAS dataset called 'outdata' to be placed in the work directory:

filename tranfile '(file hierarchy to vct.sdt)';
proc cimport data=outdata infile=tranfile;

note 3:
vct.dat is set to recfm=v, lrecl=3628, semi-colon (";") delimited.

To read the ascii data into a SAS dataset, use the statements located in "making ascii data (read).sas".

Perhaps these statements will be useful for programmers in other languages since the statements are basic. SAS programmers will wonder why the date variables are not read in with a date but a character informat. This was done deliberately since testing the statements in "making ascii data (read).sas" using PC/SAS 6.12 with date informats yielded reading errors for an unknown reason. Character variables are used instead and in another step later in the file these variables were converted to date variables.