AIDS-Related Items for Developing an AIDS Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents

This study presents a pool of AIDS-related items that researchers and clinicians could use to develop self-report AIDS questionnaires for children and adolescents. A total of 352AIDS-related itemsfrom 18AIDSsurvey studies involving children and adolescents, ranging in age from 10 to 21 years, were submitted to content analysis. Unique items with 85% agreement among raters, and items with the higher percentage of agreement (85% or above) among repeated items, were selected. On the basis of these criteria, 164 AIDS-related items were identified AIDS-related items were integrated intofwve mutually exclusive, theoretically defined groups: (a)factual knowledge, (b) misconceptions, (c) attitudes, (d) perceived susceptibility, and (e) perceived self-efficacy. Selection of itemsfrom these groups could lead to the development of a comprehensive and uniform self-report AIDS questionnaire for children and adolescents, and to meaningful comparisons of AIDS surveys by researchers and clinicians using similar items.