Female college students' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior regarding acquired immune deficiency syndrome

The purpose of this descriptive study was to compare the differences in the knowledge, attitudes, and behavior related to AIDS between female college students enrolled at a university primarily for women and female college students enrolled at a coeducational university. A total of 327 female students at UNT and 351 female students at TWU were studied. The HIV/AIDS Awareness Questionnaire was used as measurement in this study. This instrument was used to gather data for testing the 16 null hypotheses and describing the sample. Data were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients, point-biserial correlation coefficients, multiple correlation coefficients, two-way ANOVAs, and simple effects.

Overall results indicated that: (a) female college students possessed a high level of knowledge, (b) they also demonstrated high scores on attitudes test, but (c) the subjects had moderately high scores on behavior test. Significant differences emerged in the following areas: (a) between female graduate students at UNT and TWU in knowledge about AIDS, (b) between female graduate and undergraduate students at TWU in knowledge about AIDS, and (c) between student status and universities in knowledge about AIDS.