Brewer, D. D., & Garrett, S. B. No difference between 1- and 2-year recall periods in locatability of sexual and drug injection partners. Poster presented at the 13th meeting of the International Society for Sexually Transmitted Diseases Research, Denver, CO, July 12, 1999. Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2099812.

Health professionals engaged in partner notification often limit recall periods (also called interview or notification periods) for HIV contact interviews to one year or less.  Periods longer than a year are believed to be unproductive because partners more than a year in the past may be difficult to locate.  To test this belief, we compared 1- and 2-year recall periods in terms of the locatability of sexual and drug injection partners.  We recruited subjects from the largest HIV testing clinic in Seattle, U.S.A., and a large epidemiologic study of drug injectors in Seattle.  After eliciting their partners for the past 1 or 2 years, we asked subjects about their knowledge of different types of locating information for each partner.  The proportion of partners who are locatable is similar for 1- and 2-year recall periods.  This study highlights the need for research to establish efficient recall periods for HIV contact interviews.   

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