EFFECTS OF AN INSTITUTIONAL AIDS-PREVENTION INTERVENTION - MODERATIONBY GENDER

AIDS risk reduction programs are being conducted in many institutional settings, but rigorous evaluations of their effectiveness are lacking . This is particularly unfortunate in that these programs are expensiv e, and tend to be of lower intensity than those that have been shown t o be effective. Further, risk reduction is generally regarded as entai ling greater difficulty for women, who do not use condoms themselves b ut must negotiate their use with male partners, We used a quasi-experi mental design to evaluate an institutional AIDS prevention program on a New Jersey college campus, Sexual behavior was assessed via linked, anonymous mailed surveys at the beginning and end of an academic year among Ist-year students on that campus and others on a nearby control campus. Responses from the spring survey indicated that intervention c ampus students had been exposed significantly more than control studen ts to intervention components, While MANCOVA analyses indicated no mai n effect of treatment group on outcome variables, we obtained a signif icant group by gender interaction, indicating a significant effect on number of risky encounters for men but not for women, In fact, relativ e to women on the control campus, women on the intervention campus dis played reduced self-efficacy to perform safe sex at the end of the yea r. These results may indicate that although men can be effectively rea ched by low-intensity risk reduction programs, women may not be. In fa ct, interventions without adequate intensity to provide substantial an d individualized negotiation skill training may cause women to experie nce failure in these efforts.