Currently, the prevention and control of the spread of AIDS is one of the foremost international health concerns and one of the biggest social expectations in the United States as well. Until a medical solution to AIDS is found, the only viable means of AIDS prevention is to educate the public about AIDS and persuade those who are sexually active to avoid high-risk sexual behaviors.Because many studies have showed that college students are considered to possess the highest risk toward AIDS, in this study, possible factors that can change college students' behavior were examined.One hundred and ninety seven students who enrolled in two undergraduate general classes (biology and anthropology) at Ball State University were asked to complete a questionnaire concerning their sensation-seeking type and level, frequency of their interpersonal communication with their sexual partners, and quality of their AIDS/HIV education in middle and high schools. One student from this population refused to complete the questionnaire.This study showed that public relations practitioners would need to stimulate the target audience to interpersonal communication with their sexual partners, know each type of risk takers need different information from each other, and educate the target audience how to talk about this issue with their sexual partners, rather than educate them knowledge of AIDS or social norm of safe sex. / Department of Journalism

The purpose of this study was to explore the association among risk behaviors, HIV/AIDS knowledge, and cognitive variables in high-risk adolescents. Subjects were 82 youth (50 males and 32 females) residing in a Midwest residential treatment facility for abused, neglected, or delinquent children and adolescents. The mean age of the adolescents was 14.6 years. Self-report measures of AIDS knowledge, invulnerability, self-efficacy, locus of control, sensation seeking, and risk involvement were administered in counterbalanced order. Data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression analysis to examine the relation between risk behaviors and scores on invulnerability, locus of control, self-efficacy, and sensation seeking measures once age and AIDS knowledge were controlled in the initial steps. Although age and knowledge of AIDS were related positively to the likelihood of behavioral risk taking, the combination of cognitive variables explained an additional 23% of the variance in risk behaviors and accounted for the largest proportion of shared variability. Therefore, adolescents' risk behaviors appeared to be determined by their cognitive beliefs to a greater degree than by their knowledge of the consequences of such behavior. The importance of cognitive factors in the apparent behavior choices that adolescents make suggests that educational prevention programs need to consider more than just the sharing of knowledge in addressing issues of risky behavior. Instead, the perceptions of adolescents toward sensation seeking and other cognitive characteristics also must be considered. / Department of Educational Psychology

A group of 21 HIV-positive gay or bisexual men was compared with a matched group of 22 HIV-negative individuals. All subjects were sexually active gay or bisexual males matched for age, as well as age at first intercourse with males. Subjects completed a detailed sexual history questionnaire as well as a series of standardized measures of psychosocial functioning. Results indicated that subjects engaged in a wide range of unsafe sexual behaviours, and frequently combined drugs with sex. Scores on the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST) were significantly correlated with lifetime condom use. Social support was also found to be significantly associated with the lifetime number of homosexual partners. Regression analysis revealed a significant negative association between MAST scores and social support and a positive relationship between social support and CD-4 cell count. The groups were found to be similar in terms of clinical levels of anxiety and depression, self-esteem in interpersonal situations, and risk-taking personality.

As we enter the third decade of a devastating worldwide epidemic, much has been done to stem the flow of HIV/AIDS, in particular within North American and Western European urban centres. Successful prevention campaigns in the 1980s had the immediate impact of lowering the rate of HIV infection among gay men, and anti-retroviral drug therapies in the mid-1990s have literally brought thousands of gay men back from the brink. However, by the middle to late 1990s, epidemiological and anecdotal evidence has strongly suggested that gay men have begun to move away from the safer sex orthodoxy of the 1980s. / Forty gay men ranging in age from 21 to 55 were interviewed for this study in order to determine if they have changed their approach to safer sex strategies implemented in the mid-1980s. In contrast to approaches to risk behaviour that emphasize the Health Belief Model, with its focus on the rational individual, this dissertation focused on the social contexts that shape gay men's decisions. / This study found a number of factors that influenced gay men's sexual choices, including age and the changing role of community. Younger gay men, those who have come of age during the 1990s, have taken a different approach to the AIDS epidemic. None of the younger participants in this study had lost anyone to HIV. Furthermore, they were now part of a group of men who no longer considers a HIV diagnosis to be immediately fatal. New medications have definitely shifted their approach to AIDS. Finally, this group of gay men no longer feels defined by a gay community like older gay men interviewed for this study. They believe they are coming of age in a time and place where they have more choices in how they will define themselves as gay men. For older gay men, those who lost many lovers, friends, and acquaintances during the HIV epidemic, changes in gay men's sexual risk-taking are both surprising and inevitable. These men are dealing with issues of ageism, loss and lack of visibility in a changing gay community. / Although there are different age-related arguments for abandoning safer sex strategies, this study helps to explain why there is a definite shift in risk-taking behavior underway as we enter the third decade of HIV/AIDS. It suggests new challenges and approaches for AIDS service organizations to deal with a substantive change in gay men's sexual behaviour.

During the past decade, there has been increased attention on the role of mood on risk-taking and judgment. According to Isen¡¯s (1987) mood-maintenance hypothesis, individuals in a negative mood state tend to take greater risks than individuals in a neutral or positive mood state in order to improve their mood. In contrast, however, theorizing and research derived from an information-processing perspective indicates that individuals in a negative mood are more likely to engage in deliberate cognitive processes directed toward avoiding risk. This study seeks to resolve the discrepancy between these two perspectives by examining the influence of systematic cognitive processing as a mood regulation strategy (Forgas, 1998). Negative mood states were induced using a standardized film clip procedure. Participants then completed a risk-taking questionnaire either immediately following the induction, after performing a moderately difficult word anagram task, or after a delay period. As expected, participants in the anagram task condition showed lower levels of risk-taking preference than participants in the immediate judgment and delayed task conditions. Implications and future research directions for research in risk-taking and mood regulation are discussed.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Feb. 29, 2008). Directed by Cheryl Buehler; submitted to the School of Human Environmental Sciences. Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-127).

Thesis (Psy. D.)--Wheaton College, 2005. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 52-56).

Thesis (Ph.D.). / Written for the Dept. of Geography. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/07/24). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, August, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, August, 2008. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.