Is Knowledge Enough? Considering HIV/AIDS Risk Behaviors and HIV/AIDS Knowledge with African American Women

BACKGROUND: This quantitative explanatory study was designed to explain the relationship between HIV/AIDS risk-taking behaviors among African American women and their knowledge surrounding HIV/AIDS. More specifically, the research considers whether knowledge alone was sufficient to alter African-American women’s risk-taking behaviors regarding HIV/AIDS. OBJECTIVES: This study was designed to investigate knowledge surrounding sexual risk-taking behaviors including 1) heterosexual transmission; 2) low and sporadic condom usage; 3) illicit drug use; and 4) multiple sex partners associated with HIV positive and negative status among African-American women. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Participants in this study were African-American women who ranged in age between 24 and 44 years. This sample of African-American women was divided into two groups according to their HIV status: 53 women who were HIV positive and 62 women who were HIV negative women. The data for this investigation were obtained through self-administered questionnaires. The t-test was used to analyze the data through the use of the windows version of the statistical package for social sciences (19.0). RESULTS: Findings suggest that knowledge of HIV was not found to be significantly different for the HIV positive and negative groups, and thus, suggest that knowing about the consequences of risk-taking behaviors is not sufficient to alter one’s behavior among African American women. The findings from this investigation will contribute new empirical knowledge to the existing social work database on HIV/AIDS and knowledge specifically relative to African-American women. CONCLUSIONS: It was anticipated that knowledge of HIV would have been significantly higher in the HIV negative group than in the HIV positive group. However, the hypothesis was not supported by data. The HIV positive women and negative women were equally knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS.