The personal community is also the framework through which people share knowledge about AIDS risk and prevention, especially in AIDS-endemic areas, and is a natural personal support system during illness for child care and housing. In the personal community context, kinchart-sociograms represent networks of a subject's relationships and interactions with other persons. The objective is to define these networks in terms of concrete social relations in specific localities. The identification of an individual's personal social relationships, however, does not necessarily imply interactions between constituent members as in traditional social network analysis. The kinchart-sociogram method permits a graphic and quantifiable description of complex social realities. As an intervention, it is of marked interest to subjects and encourages the subject's development of awareness about AIDS risk and the extent of drug use in sexual and residential relations. An account of the number of HIV-infected adult household members generated by the kinchart-sociogram method provides a perspective on the number of children at risk of losing one or both parents and potentially becoming dependent on an already overburdened foster care system. The kinchart- sociogram method can be used to demonstrate the social nature of drug use and its expression in influential social contexts. Examples of data obtained using the kinchart-sociogram method are provided, and the data questionnaire is appended. 17 references and 1 figure