College Students' Perceptions of Sources of Information about AIDS

Abstract

Public communication campaigns and social marketing literature identify principles for developing effective AIDS education and prevention efforts. Planners need to know the audience, identify salient audience segments, and understand the characteristics of information sources that the particular audience finds believable and is likely to use. In this study, the authors investigated college students' perceptions of (1) the credibility and likelihood of using a variety of interpersonal, media, and institutional sources of information about AIDS; (2) the sources that have provided them with the most information about AIDS; and (3) the relationships among those perceptions. They also investigated potential gender differences in perceptions of sources of AIDS information. Respondents to a larger probability sample survey rated 35 sources of information about AIDS. Although mass media sources clearly provided the greatest amount of information, they were conspicuously less prominent in their acceptability to respondents. Leaflets were the only kinds of media sources that the respondents rated high on both believability and likelihood of use. In contrast, three interpersonal sources and four institutional sources appeared as best choices on the combined criteria. Results are discussed in terms of implications for planning and implementing AIDS education and prevention programs for the college-student audience.