mental health AIDS

Winter 2007 Newsletter / Volume 8, Issue 2

HIV Assessment News

HIV Counseling & Testing

Hullett (2006) drew data from 107 predominantly white, sexually active college students to develop a model that describes motivations for HIV testing in this population and found that, "[o]verall, messages advocating testing for the self-interested reason of one's own health were more effective than messages advocating testing for the goal of protecting one's partners" (p. 57). On the basis of these findings, Hullett makes the following recommendations:

Foremost would be the importance of increasing perception of uncertainty [regarding one's HIV status], given its role in both increasing positive attitudes [toward HIV testing] directly and indirectly through fear arousal. ... [M]essages advocating testing for the purpose of taking care of one's health could be effective at convincing young adults beyond this sample to get tested for HIV. Such messages could be used in tandem with other approaches that attempt to remove inaccurate beliefs that prevent people from getting tested. For example, investigators have identified a number of perceptions that may lead to underestimating one's risk of infection, including the perception that HIV positive individuals are different from themselves, trust that develops in monogamous relationships, and perceptions that one's partner is "safe" (i.e., disease-free ... ). These perceptions reduce people's uncertainty regarding STDs, leading to the potentially false belief that their probability of infection is zero. It would be useful for practitioners to continue highlighting the fact that none of these relational perceptions provides an accurate means for assessing STD status and [such perceptions] are only useful when people truly know their and their partners' status. As these misperceptions are corrected and uncertainty increases, message recipients should be told explicitly that medical testing is necessary for reducing their uncertainty about their health. (pp. 65-66)

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