Evaluation of an HIV-related workshop for adolescents at a secondary school in Germany
Date
2019
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Canadian Center of Science and Education
Abstract
This study set out to establish to what extent an HIV-related awareness workshop involving German adolescents at a secondary school in Brandenburg can help to increase knowledge levels about this disease. Only a few studies have explored what German youths know about HIV, with none so far evaluating a workshop aimed at increasing HIV-related knowledge levels among this cohort. In a pre-test post-test design, changes in participants’ knowledge levels related to the risk of HIV transmission associated with different types of exposures or behaviors such as unprotected sex, mother-to-child-transmission, blood transfusions, and shaking hands were assessed. Previous studies have shown that German youths lack knowledge in this regard.
From pre-test to post-test, there was a statistically significant increase in knowledge levels about the risk of HIV transmission. However, knowledge levels about the risk of HIV transmission was relatively low. An average of 59.2% questions were answered correctly at pre-test vs. 68.1% of questions at post-test. The present study underlines that an awareness workshop can be a useful tool to improve knowledge levels about the risk of HIV transmission among youths. However, the results also revealed that there is still some work to be done to educate young Germans about the basic facts around HIV/AIDS. Although HIV incidence rate in Germany has been slightly decreasing, there is a growing number of new infections among people who are unaware of their HIV status – while research shows that youths in this country are seemingly complacent about the danger of HIV/AIDS, and often do not use condoms during sex.
Description
CITATION: Davis, B. & Grosse, K. 2019. Evaluation of an HIV-related workshop for adolescents at a secondary school in Germany. Global Journal of Health Science, 11(12):157-164, doi:10.5539/gjhs.v11n12p157.
The original publication is available at https://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/gjhs
The original publication is available at https://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/gjhs
Keywords
HIV (Viruses) -- Information services -- Brandenburg an der Havel (Germany), High school students -- Knowledge and learning -- Brandenburg an der Havel (Germany)
Citation
Davis, B. & Grosse, K. 2019. Evaluation of an HIV-related workshop for adolescents at a secondary school in Germany. Global Journal of Health Science, 11(12):157-164, doi:10.5539/gjhs.v11n12p157