Responsibility as a dimension of HIV prevention normative beliefs: measurement in three drug-using samples M. W. ROSS 1 , S. C. TIMPSON 1 , M. L. WILLIAMS 1 , C. AMOS 1 , S. MCCURDY 1 , A. M. BOWEN 2 , & G. P. KILONZO 3 1 University of Texas-Health Science Center at Houston, USA, 2 University of Wyoming, USA, and 3 University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Abstract The concept of responsibility was derived originally from principles of morality, as part of a network of rights, duties and obligations. HIV risk-related studies have suggested that a sense of responsibility for condom use to protect a partner is a potentially important predictor of condom use in drug-using populations. We created a four-item scale measuring Self responsibility to use condoms and Partner’s responsibility to use condoms. Data were collected from three drug-using samples: crack smokers, HIV seropositive crack smokers in an intervention study in Houston, Texas, and Tanzanian heroin users in Dar es Salaam. Data indicated that the four responsibility items had high alpha coefficients in each sample, and that there were moderate to high intercorrelations between equivalent self and partner responsibility items. There were significant differences in scale scores between the crack smokers and the HIV positive crack smokers and the Tanzanian samples, but no significant differences between the HIV positive and Tanzanian samples. Comparing within the first crack- smoker sample those who were HIV positive and negative showed significant differences in the direction of higher beliefs in responsibility to use condoms in the HIV positive group. These data suggest that responsibility is measurable, holds similar psychometric properties across three samples differing in culture and HIV serostatus, and that condom use responsibility is conceptualized as a measure of general responsibility rather than as a reciprocal self/partner responsibility. The concept of responsibility (to self, others, or society in general) has been implicated in beliefs about condom use and HIV transmission. Fre- quently, rights are balanced with responsibilities (Danziger, 1996). Marks et al. (1999) also separate out individual-level personal responsibility from the concept of collective responsibility. Such a division can be conceptualized as ‘my responsibility’ versus ‘our responsibility’, and may call for individual-level and population-level strategies respectively to in- crease a sense of responsibility. Van Empelen et al. (2001) used responsibility questions as a measure of personal normative beliefs, which included an in- dividual’s personal feelings of responsibility to per- form (or refuse) a behaviour, and found that it was a significant predictor of condom use for steady vs casual partners. The concept of responsibility developed as part of the view of a community based on moral law which was put forward in the Scottish Enlightenment of the mid-eighteenth century. Lord Kames (Home, 1779/ 2005) proposed that community was built on a network of rights, duties and obligations (which he distinguishes from mere benevolence) which projects a particular moral view of the world: this view is modified by culture, time, and context (Herman, 2001). The moral sense is internalized as conscience, and expressed as personal responsibility to social, rather than selfish, actions. Kames also notes that the closer the individual, the greater the sense of responsibility. Psychologically, this is expressed as a belief that one has a responsibility to others (in a legal sense, this may be expressed as a ‘duty of care’: in many jurisdictions, a person with HIV has a duty to warn sexual partners, or not expose them by using a condom for sex). A sense of responsibility, and its associated belief, is thus a product of both moral norms and legal precedent. It can be expressed as a responsibility for a specific behaviour (e.g. using a condom with a specific partner or class of partner). The concept of responsibility has emerged in a number of studies of condom attitudes, beliefs and use as a key dimension. Ross (1988) found that responsibility for and comfort with condom use emerged as a dimension in his study of attitudes toward condom use in Australian gay men, and that only the Responsibility and Comfort with Condom Use subscale predicted frequency of anal condom Correspondence: Dr M. W. Ross, Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research, School of Public Health, University of Texas- Health Science Center at Houston, PO Box 20036, Houston TX 77225. E-mail: Michael.W.Ross@uth.tmc.edu AIDS Care, March 2007; 19(3): 403  409 ISSN 0954-0121 print/ISSN 1360-0451 online # 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09540120600813780