Perpetuated HIV Microaggressions: A Novel Scale to Measure Subtle Discrimination Against People Living With HIV.

Abstract

HIV discrimination has served as a barrier to addressing the HIV epidemic and providing effective HIV treatment and care. Measuring HIV discrimination, particularly covert HIV discrimination, has proven to be complex. Adapted from a previous scale, we developed a perpetuated HIV micro-aggressions scale to assess covert forms of discriminatory beliefs among HIV-negative/unknown HIV status individuals. Factor analysis resulted in three subscales, explaining 73.58% of the scale's variance. The new scale demonstrated both convergent validity (HIV prejudice, HIV stereotypes) and discriminant validity (alcohol use, depressive symptomology). Perpetuated HIV microaggressions were significantly associated with HIV conspiracy beliefs, HIV prejudice, and HIV stereotypes. This new scale can serve as an important tool in evaluating perpetuated HIV microaggressions among HIV-negative individuals.