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Evaluating the effectiveness of an educational intervention to prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted infections in college students: A social cognitive theory approach
Abstract
The high rate of sexually transmitted disease (STD) infection including HIV/AIDS has created a crucial need to prevent sexually transmitted infections among the sexually active. To benefit the health of sexually active college students, educational programs should seek to increase the consistent use of latex condoms. Many interventions to increase the use of condoms have not been based upon a framework reflecting a clear understanding of behavior change. Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) has been found to be a useful tool for explaining, understanding and predicting a variety of health behaviors that are effective for preventing the transmission of STDs/HIV. An intact non-equivalent control group design was used to determine if the SCT constructs of outcome expectations and self-efficacy could predict the use of condoms by sexually active college students and to assess the effectiveness of an SCT based STD/HIV education program. A multiple discriminant function analysis and a multiple analysis of covariance were used for data analysis. The subjects (n = 184) were enrolled in a lower division healthy lifestyles course. Two course sections were randomly assigned to the experimental or control education program. The data were gathered through the use of a pretest and posttest questionnaire. No significant difference existed between the control and experimental groups on the adjusted posttest scores. One significant (p $<$.05) discriminant function dominated by the score for outcome expectations accounted for 61.4% of the variance. Non-users of condoms were most different from the other user groups on the variable of outcome expectations while the consistent condom users were most different from the other users on the variable of self-efficacy. These findings suggest that programs to promote condom use by non-users should focus on positive outcomes of condom use and that sporadic condom users may be moved to consistent use by efforts to promote self-efficacy.
Subject Area
Health education|Public health
Recommended Citation
Jankovitz, Kristine, "Evaluating the effectiveness of an educational intervention to prevent the transmission of sexually transmitted infections in college students: A social cognitive theory approach" (1995). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9600739.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9600739