Two curricular settings of a HIV education unit related to secondary school students' HIV knowledge and attitude

Problem. The problem of the study was to compare the effects of two curricular settings of a HIV education unit upon secondary school students' attitude toward and knowledge about HIV prevention behaviors.;Procedures. Health education and biology classes from three secondary schools participated in a quasi-experimental study. At each school, the two experimental groups received a 5-day HIV education unit (HEU). Experimental group 1 (n = 91) received the HEU within a health education class. Experimental group 2 (n = 38) received the HEU within a biology class. The control group (n = 131) was given no intervention. All subjects were administered a 45-item questionnaire as a pretest, posttest, and a four week delayed posttest to determine changes in the dependent variables. The HEU consisted of approximately 250 minutes of instruction focusing on improving HIV prevention knowledge, attitude, and skills needed to help reinforce or adopt preventive behaviors. For all subjects combined, a one-way ANOVA and Tukey-Kramer's test were used to determine specific source of variance at the pretest session. Analysis of the covariance was used to adjust for the pretest effect at the two remaining test sessions. A subsequent Tukey-Kramer's test was performed to determine the specific source of variance between the groups at the post posttest session for the HIV prevention attitude score. Paired t-tests were used to analysis student retention of attitude and knowledge.;Findings. The subjects in experimental group 1 scored significantly higher in HIV prevention knowledge than the subjects in the other two groups at the pretest session. Experimental group 1 subjects also scored significantly higher in HIV prevention attitude than the subjects in the control group at the pretest session. Neither curricular setting produce a significant change in the students' HIV prevention knowledge. HIV prevention attitude did significantly improve for the subjects in experimental group 1, but not the other two groups.;Conclusions. Based upon the findings of this study, the HEU within the health education class had a positive impact on students' HIV prevention attitude, while the biology class did not. This improvement occurs a short period after the completion of the unit. Student HIV prevention knowledge was not improved, regardless of the curricular setting of the unit.