The overall purpose of this study was to understand what factors contribute to teachers' willingness to communicate about HIV/AIDS in the broad educational setting (schools and communities). The study sought to fill the gap in the research on teachers and HIV/AIDS which has typically focused on cataloguing teachers' knowledge and attitudes, but without relating them directly to practice. The assumption of this study was that a better understanding of the personal and contextual variables that influence teachers' willingness to communicate about HIV/AIDS provides a key input into policy decisions and into the design of practical interventions that will strengthen the teachers' role as communicators about HIV/AIDS. The data were collected in Gaza Province in Southern Mozambique among primary and secondary school teachers by administering surveys to a stratified sample of 606 primary and secondary school teachers in five districts of Gaza province. Multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze the data. This study found that age, personal experience with HIV/AIDS, level taught and value expressive attitude functions toward talking about HIV/AIDS have a consistent impact on teachers' intentions to talk about HIV/AIDS and on their past behavior of talking about HIV/AIDS in schools and communities. Thus younger teachers, teachers who know someone who is sick/has died of HIV/AIDS, teachers who teach upper primary, and teachers who hold weak value expressive attitude functions are more likely to talk about HIV/AIDS across all three behaviors. Future intentions to talk about HIV/AIDS are also influenced by high perceived behavioral control. With respect to school behavior, it was found that teachers who had a high consistent record of talking about HIV/AIDS in schools had a high overall perception of personal risk, a high positive overall attitude toward talking about HIV/AIDS. Finally, with respect to past behavior of talking in the community it was found that in addition to the influence of age, personal experience, level taught, and value expressive attitude, teachers who were more likely to talk about HIV/AIDS if they consistently used condoms, had a high perception of personal risk, and a high positive overall attitude toward talking about HIV/AIDS. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2004. / April 27, 2004. / Strategies For Addressing HIV/AIDS, Hiv/Aids Behavior, Teachers Perceptions Of HIV/AIDS, Iterative Analysis Of Unstructured Data, Subjective Norms, Perceived Social Norms, Hiv/Aids Knowledge And Attitude Scale, Hiv/Aids Knowledge, Perceived Behavioral Control, Attitude Solicitation Survey, Theory Of Planned Behavior, Functional Theory, Attitude, Function Theory, Theory Of Reasoned Action, Talking About HIV/AIDS / Includes bibliographical references. / Gary R. Heald, Professor Directing Dissertation; Marcy Driscoll, Outside Committee Member; John K. Mayo, Committee Member; Steve McDowell, Committee Member; Laura Arpan, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_182649 |
| Contributors | Visser, Muriel (authoraut), Heald, Gary R. (professor directing dissertation), Driscoll, Marcy (outside committee member), Mayo, John K. (committee member), McDowell, Steve (committee member), Arpan, Laura (committee member), School of Communication (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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