Knowledge, behavior, and attitudes of adolescent university students towards HIV infection and AIDS.

Unlabelled: The aim of this study was to evaluate the knowledge, behavior, and attitudes of students entering the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) towards HIV/AIDS, as well as to determine the differences between genders and between groups with different behavior in terms of HIV/AIDS risk behavior, through the conduct of an ad hoc semi-structured questionnaire. This questionnaire was completed anonymously by 12,000 university students going in for compulsory medical check-up at the Health and Social Welfare Office of the UBA. Two thousand cases were selected by simple randomized sampling and statistically analyzed. Results revealed that: (1) 87.2% of the population under study was between 18 and 27 years old; (2) the students' knowledge of the subject was acceptable; (3) the percentage of respondents who reported having sexual intercourse with more than one person decreased as the number of sexual partners in a year increased. Less than 1.5% explicitly stated being homosexual or bisexual; (4) 53.9% of the men and 46.7% of the women claimed they always used condoms; (5) analysis of the perception of their own risk showed that 75% considered they were not at risk; (6) between 95.8% and 98% were in favor of developing educational-preventive activities and 64.2% thought compulsory AIDS screening for job applicants or candidates for educational courses was discrimination.

Conclusions: (a) Information available to admission course students is sufficient. However, there are contradictions in their responses about their own behaviors; (b) Most of the respondents are in favor of the corresponding Faculties implementing educational and preventive measures. The students would regard the University's intervention as a way of fulfilling its social role.