This report presents data collected through the HIV Testing Survey, conducted in 7 states and New York City¹ as HITS-2000. Men who have sex with men were recruited from gay bars, heterosexuals were recruited at STD clinics, and injection drug users were recruited through street outreach or at needle exchange programs (NEP). Within each state, the largest city and other key metropolitan areas were included. For each venue (bar, clinic, street/NEP), specific sites were identified through formative research, which included review of existing reports, such as local HIV/AIDS surveillance reports (“secondary data review”); key informant interviews; and observations at some of the potential interview sites. Sites were selected by project staff based on the feasibility of conducting interviews there and using criteria determined locally to obtain a diverse sample of each risk group.

Persons at the venues were eligible to participate in HITS if they were at least 18 years of age, a resident of the state for at least 6 months, and gave informed consent. Further details of selection and sampling processes within venues have been described elsewhere.² After eligibility was assessed and informed consent obtained, participants were administered a face-to-face interview by trained study personnel. No personal identifiers were collected. This study was reviewed for human subjects protections at CDC and participating states.

Behaviors reported during the survey were used as selection criteria for analysis purposes. MSM must have had sex with a man in the previous 12 months. Heterosexuals must have presented to the clinic with suspected new STD and been sexually active with only members of the opposite sex within the previous 12 months; however, clients were ineligible if they had been at an STD clinic in the past 90 days, were coming in for follow-up treatment for an earlier infection, or had been referred to the clinic via partner notification, as determined by chart review. IDU must have injected drugs in the previous 12 months.

For each project area, the target sample size was 100 each of MSM, HRH, and IDU. In addition, sites attempted to recruit approximately equal numbers of male and female heterosexual persons from STD clinics; there were no sex distribution requirements for IDU. Among those approached who were determined to be eligible, overall 83% completed an interview (84% MSM, 79% HRH, 87% IDU).

For this report we used several additional criteria for exclusion from analyses. Although 8 transgendered persons were interviewed, they were excluded from analysis as they were not consistently asked the sexual risk behavior questions. All persons who reported being HIV-positive were excluded from analysis (n = 214), as were those with missing data on HIV testing (n = 15) and those who never received their HIV test results (n = 113). Data from State E's IDU component were not included because only 4% of persons who completed interviews met the eligibility criteria of having injected drugs in the past 12 months.

As all participants were administered the same questionnaire, information about risk behaviors other than those pertaining to the venue (e.g., sex with men among male IDU; injection drug use among MSM and HRH) are available. However, we present risk behavior data by venue (e.g., injection drug use practices only for persons recruited at street/NEP venues). This is because we used venue-based sampling as a means to reach persons engaging in specific high risk behaviors (e.g., gay bars to find men who have sex with men; needle exchange sites to find persons who inject drugs).

Persons who reported more than one racial group were categorized as multi-racial. However, anyone who reported they were Hispanic was categorized as Hispanic, regardless of any other racial groups they reported.

We categorized participants as correctly identifying their state's HIV case surveillance policy if they answered yes to the question describing the appropriate HIV case surveillance policy and no or “don’t know” to questions describing other policies. Those who answered "don't know" to all questions were categorized as not knowing the policy, and other response patterns were considered incorrect.