Table 3.

Summary Measures of Explicit Bias Questions

Survey Question	Meana	Minimum	25th Pctl	Median	75th Pctl	Maximum
Category 1: Social attitudes toward PWUDb
Drug users should be accepted completely into our society.	1.66	1	1	2	2	3
Drug use is immoral.	2.32	1	1	2	3	5
I avoid the company of known drug users whenever possible.	3.42	1	2	4	4	5
Drug users are mistreated in our society.	1.67	1	1	2	2	3
People should feel sympathetic and understanding of drug users.	1.72	1	1	2	2	3
Category 2: Perceived control over drug useb
Drug users are responsible for their addiction.	2.58	1	2	2	4	5
People use drugs to avoid dealing with their own inadequacies.	2.75	1	2	3	4	5
Drug users have weak characters.	1.94	1	1	1	3	5
Drug users can stop using drugs whenever they decide to.	1.41	1	1	1	2	4
Category 3: Do PWUD deserve to receive quality health carec
There is no point in treating patients who use illegal drugs because they don’t care about their health anyway.	1.43	1	1	1	1	5
Patients who are drug users should be offered the same high-quality medical resources as for all other patients.	1.25	1	1	1	2	2
It makes me angry to think of Medicaid paying to treat diseases that were brought on by illicit drug use.	1.91	1	1	1	3	5
It isn’t fair to other patients when drug users monopolize the resources at the emergency department.	2.41	1	1	2	4	5
I am tired of dealing with patients who come into clinic/ED repeatedly for drug related problems.	2.67	1	2	2	4	5

^aExplicit bias survey results are based on a 5-Point Likert scale (“strongly agree”, “agree”, “neutral”, “disagree”, “strongly disagree”) converted to a numerical scale in which 1 represents the least negative and 5 represents the most negative bias.

^bQuestions obtained from Bremer and von Hippel, 2008.

^cNew explicit bias questions developed in this study.