A six-month follow-up of adolescents' sexual risk-taking, HIV/AIDS knowledge, and attitudes to condoms
✍ Scribed by Doreen A. Rosenthal; Helen Shepherd
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1993
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 890 KB
- Volume
- 3
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1052-9284
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
A follow-up study was conducted to investigate change in sexual behaviour, knowledge about HIV/AIDS transmission, and attitudes to condoms over a 6-month period in a sample of late-adolescent students. The study also obtained subjective reports of HIV/AIDS-relevant change. Overall there was a decrease in sexual risk-taking behaviour with casual partners but no change occurred in sexual behaviour with regular partners, knowledge about HIVI AIDS, attitude towards condoms, or intention to use a condom on next sexual encounter. Examination of individual data revealed that, for some adolescents where behavioural change had occurred, this was in the direction of less safe sex. There were few self-reports of change in sexual behaviour, intention to take precautions against HIVIAIDS, or concern about HIVi AIDS over the preceding 6 months. Subjective reports of behaviour change did not correspond with reports of actual behaviour. Low rates of behaviour change are attributed to the failure of adolescents to personalize the threat of AIDS and to their trust in the safety of sex with a regular partner as well as to the lack of relevance of HIV/AIDS education campaigns to this group.