A MEASURE OF KNOWLEDGE AND CONFIDENCE IN RELATION TO HIV AND AIDS - RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

Knowledge of HIV and AIDS is widely seen as an important determinant o f anxiety about such infection in health care workers. However, existi ng measures of this knowledge suffer from a number of methodological p roblems and few demonstrate adequate reliability and validity. This pa per documents the development of a new measure detailing its reliabili ty and validity. Knowledge, and also confidence in knowledge, were ass essed across seven domains of relevant information (e.g. epidemiology, personal risk, symptomatology) in one non-expert group (non-medical u ndergraduate psychologists) rand in three groups with greater expertis e (nursing students and third year and final year medical students). T he measure was shown to be reliable and to discriminate between the fo ur groups in a manner consistent with the level of education received by each group and in terms of bath the scab scores for the seven domai ns and the individual items. In general, final year medical students w ere shown to be more knowledgeable, and more confident in their Knowle dge, than the other groups. The non-medical undergraduates showed the lowest level of knowledge. In general, the groups appeared under-confi dent in their knowledge about HIV/AIDS. This was interpreted in terms a members of these groups exhibiting caution and the perceived fluctua ting nature of the HIV knowledge base. Implications for the training o f health care workers in relation to HIV/AIDS are discussed.