Attitude of Adolescents towards People Living...

Attitude of Adolescents towards People Living with HIV: An Item Analysis

Author Name : Sandeep Arya, Mavis Nikita Sagar

ABSTRACT

Introduction: HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, is a virus that actively targets the immune system. AIDS can develop if HIV is not treated. As a comparison, just 24,000 people in India have HIV, while 38.4 million are afflicted worldwide.  The objectives of the current study were to determine the item analysis of attitudes of adolescents towards people living with HIV (PLWH), and to find out the association between attitudes of adolescents towards people living with HIV with their selected demographic variables.

Materials and Methods: A descriptive study was carried out among 11th and 12th grade students at the Govt. Higher School in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, to assess attitudes towards HIV-positive people. A total of 95 adolescents were chosen at random, and data was collected using a structured interview schedule.

Result and discussion: Overall findings show that most (94%) students have a positive attitude towards HIV disease in the item "love and affection with family," more than half (58%) have a positive attitude towards life in the item "suffer throughout the life span," the majority (82% of them) have a positive attitude towards reproduction in the item "not get pregnancy", most (87%) students have a positive attitude towards marriage in the item "spoil the next generation," and nearly half (53-54%) of students have a negative attitude towards social interaction in the items "social function" and "better to neglect". The "p" value was found to be greater than 0.05 for sex and religion, and the "p" value was found to be less than 0.05 for the students' age, occupation, and source of information with their level of attitude towards the patients living with HIV.

Key Terms: Attitude, Adolescents, Person living with HIV, PLWH, HIV