title: Addicts' attitudes toward drugs: a semantic-differential study.
abstract: The Drug Rating Scale, an adaptation of the Osgood semantic-differential technique, was devised to measure the connotative aspects of attitudes toward drugs. Sixty-two heroin-addict clients and fourteen staff members of the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic completed the Scale. The Addict group tended to regard heroin in a negative light, possibly consistent with their own lack of self-esteem. Amphetamines and LSD had the greatest distance from heroin in the addicts' "semantic space"; this was consistent with addicts' relative preference for alternative drugs to heroin. The evaluative and activity dimensions provided a plausible assignment of the eight drugs inquired about into four quadrants.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D001290:Attitude; D003415:Crime; D005260:Female; D006556:Heroin Dependence; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs; D008297:Male; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D044469:Racial Groups; D012067:Religion; D012659:Semantic Differential; D012737:Sex Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders
chemical_list: D013287:Illicit Drugs; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations