The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Bechara et al, 1994) was designed to assess risk preferences by simulating real-life decision making using uncertainty, rewards, and penalties. The task is sometimes known as Bechara's Gambling Task, and is widely used in research of cognition and emotion.

This assessment measures injection drug use in the prior 6 months and the last time injected. In addition, it measures type and frequency of drug injection, frequency of receptive and distributive needle sharing, sharing of injection paraphernalia, use of syringe exchange, use of syringe disinfection practices, and number and types of different needle sharing partners.

This assessment collects data on the history of HIV testing and receipt of results within the past year, including the approximate date of the most recent HIV test.

Luborsky's concept of the "helping alliance" refers to a patient's experience of the treatment or relationship with a therapist as being helpful or potentially helpful. The quality of the patient-therapist relationship can be assessed by asking the patient, the therapist, or an (objective) observer. The Helping Alliance Questionnaire is part of the Penn Helping Alliance Scales and is a patient self-report measure which assesses the extent to which the patient experiences the therapist and the therapy as helpful. It contains two types of helping alliance: Type I -- Perceived Helpfulness -- defined as the patient's experience of the therapist as providing or being capable of providing the help that is needed; and Type II -- Collaboration or Bonding -- defined as the patient's experience of treatment as a process of working together with the therapist toward the goals of treatment. The HAQ contains 11 items rated on a 4-point scale (completely disagree, disagree, agree, and completely agree). There are two versions of the HAq -- a version for the patient, asking questions regarding their relationship with their therapist ("I feel I can depend upon the therapist," e.g.), and a version for the therapist, asking the same questions in reverse ("The patient feels he/she can depend upon me.") A revised version of the HAq, the HAq-II, was published by Luborsky et al. in 1996 (see Other References, below). The authors had become aware that the original HAQ was limited by the presence of items that were explicity assessing early symptomatic improvement and by the fact that all the items were worded positively. To address those limitations, they deleted the six items reflecting early improvement and added 14 new items that appeared to tap more fully the various aspects of the helping alliance. Five of the new items relate to the collaborative effort of patient and therapist ("The therapist and I have meaningful exchanges," e.g.); five additional items address the patient's perception of the therapist ("At times I distrust the therapist's judgement," e.g.). One of the other added items deals directly with the patient's motivation ("I want very much to work out my problems"), and one other relates to the patient's perception of the therapist's feelings about the patient ("I believe that the therapist likes me as a person"). In contrast to the original HAq, the HAq-II also includes five items that are worded negatively; for example, "The procedures used in my therapy are NOT well suited to my needs."

"The Heaviness of Smoking Index (HSI) was developed as a test to measure nicotine dependence by using two questions from the Fagerstrom Tolerance Questionnaire and the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence: time to first smoking in the morning and number of cigarettes per day. It uses a six-point scale calculated from the number of cigarettes smoked per day (1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31+) and the time to first cigarette after waking (less than/equal to 5, 6-30, 31-60, and 61+ minutes). Nicotine dependence is then categorized into a three-category variable: low (0-1), medium (2-4), and high (5-6). HSI as a measure for assessing nicotine dependence may have significant floor effects among lighter smokers seen in non-clinical populations and the validity of the measure for assessing dependence in a general population may be questioned. Nevertheless, HSI is commonly used in both clinical and population surveys to assess dependence, and may provide a simple way for clinicians prescribing dependency-based treatments to classify their patients."

The HAM-D was designed to measure the severity of depressive symptoms in patients with primary depressive illness, and is the most commonly used observer-rated depressive symptom rating scale. It is used for quantifying the results of an interview and its value depends entirely on the skill of the interviewer in eliciting the necessary information. The HAM-D is useful for monitoring changes in depressive symptoms with treatment and in comparing the efficacy of various interventions if the patient requires more than one type of treatment. The scale contains 17 variables measured on either a five-point or a three-point rating scale, the latter being used where quantification of the variable is either difficult or impossible. Among the variables are: depressed mood, suicide, work and loss of interest, retardation, agitation, gastrointestinal symptoms, general somatic symptoms, hypochondriasis, loss of insight, and loss of weight. It is useful to have two raters independently scoring a patient at the same interview. The scores of the patient are obtained by summing the scores of the two physicians. The reliability and validity are generally favorable. Completion time is 15-20 minutes.

This assessment includes questions about the days and quantities of substances used over the preceding 6 months. In addition, it includes questions about frequency and amount of use, including alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin poppers, club-drugs, frequency and types of drugs injected, and sharing of drugs, needles, and other paraphernalia. It also includes questions about overdoses and any drug-related hospitalizations. Finally, the assessment includes questions to measure the point at which a participant is in his/her course of drug treatment.

This assessment focuses on vaginal and anal rather than oral sex behavior because vaginal and anal sex are far riskier behaviors for contracting HIV. Questions include total number of sex partners in prior 6 months; total number of vaginal sex partners and anal sex partners; total number of unprotected vaginal and total number of anal sex partners and total acts of unprotected vaginal and anal sex; and total number of unprotected vaginal/anal acts with HIV-positive, negative, and unknown serostatus partners.