A Population-based Study into Knowledge, Attitudes and Beliefs (KAB) about HIV/AIDS

Authors

1 Faculty of Medicine,Mashhad University of Medical Sciences,Mashhad, IR Iran

2 Medical Ethics Department, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran Mashhad, Iran. Tel: +985138002388; Email: khajedalueem@mums.ac.ir

Abstract

Background: It has been reported that three factors may be responsible for the social stigma associated with disease: widespread ignorance, little information andmisconceptions about the disease in society.
 
Objectives: This study is aimed to assess knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about HIV/AIDS in residents of Mashhad, the largest city in northeast Iran.
 
Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted over three days, starting on December 1 2013, since this day was the World’s AIDS day. Each day the investigating group carried out the study in a different crowded place in the city. Using a convenience samplingmethod,members of the public were asked to fill in a questionnaire, which included the world health organization’s instru- ment for assessing knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about HIV/AIDS. The data obtained were evaluated by frequency and percentage ratios, Chi-square (2 ),Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests, using the significance level P < 0.05.
 
Results: Three hundred and eighty five individuals participated in this study. Themedian age was 27 years and the interquartile range was 21 - 45 years. The data analysis showed that most participants had good knowledge in this general domain: 70.2% of the answers in this domain were correct (47.1% in males and 23.1% in females). In general, the respondents’ attitudes toward AIDS were found to be tolerable and the total score showed significant differences according to educational level (P < 0.001). The majority of the respon- dents indicated that television, newspapers,magazines, and bookswere theirmajor sources of information about AIDS. Approximately 80% of participants needed specific information about the disease, with the preventionmethods being themost frequently requested information.
 
Conclusions: This study showed that wemust putmore effort in translating knowledge into behavior.

Keywords

Open Access Policy: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Razavi International Journal of Medicine
Volume 4, Issue 1
January 2016

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