What is the impact of a campus AIDS education course?

To meet a graduation requirement at a state university, 225 students took a 1-semester interdisciplinary course on AIDS. In addition to lectures, readings, and recitation sections, all the students participated in three small-group discussions of their feelings on AIDS-related issues. Students in other courses at the same university served as controls. Anonymous questionnaires were administered before and after the course to assess changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors related to AIDS. When compared with the control group, students in the course had become more knowledgeable about the disease, less fearful of AIDS, and less homophobic. They perceived the AIDS epidemic as more severe than they did before the course, but they were more likely to believe that effective preventive measures were possible. They were also more likely to believe that others in their peer group were taking action to prevent HIV infection. There was no significant increase in either the experimental or the control group in the students' belief that they were personally vulnerable to AIDS, nor was there any statistically significant change in AIDS-related sexual or drug-abuse behaviors.