AIDS and intimate relationships: Adolescents’ knowledge and attitudes

Abstract

The knowledge level about HIV/AIDS among American adolescents aged 16 to 19 has been assessed on several occasions, showing that in recent years their knowledge base has improved. The knowledge bases of British adolescents and of adolescents younger than 16 have been largely ignored. In attempting to assess the likely impact on present or future behaviors of increasing adolescents’ knowledge base about AIDS it is important to also know something of adolescents’ attitudes to intimate relationships and to sex within those relationships. Previous studies have not linked these two aspects. In this study two hundred London schoolchildren aged 14 and 15 years completed a questionnaire tapping both their knowledge about HIV infection and its transmission and their attitudes to intimate relationships. Their answers revealed that they had absorbed the simple media messages about AIDS, that it kills and that use of a condom during sex offers protection. However they were less well informed on detailed aspects of prevention, although, worryingly, they believed that they knew all that they needed to about preventive measures. The majority had attitudes to intimate relationships that were compatible with the message of restricting their number of sexual partners; however, a significant minority did not. The latter were more likely to deny the risk associated with promiscuity. It is suggested that school-based AIDS education programs should help individuals to develop new attitudes to intimate relationships that are compatible with risk avoidance.