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Risk beliefs and sensation seeking as correlate of HIV risk behaviour across gender and locale

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Pages: 541-547
Priyanka Shukla (Shree Ramswaroop Memorial University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh)
Madhurima Pradhan (Department of Psychology, Lucknow University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh)

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS has generated a global epidemic that far exceeds what was predicted even a decade ago. HIV among young people has become a major health problem in recent decades. Young people aged 1524 accounted for about 42 per cent of new adult HIV infections in 2010, and 5 million (4.4 million5.9 million) young men and women are currently living with HIV (UNAIDS, 2012). NFHS III data (2005-06) shows that now HIV/AIDS is not the problem of urban society only but it is spreading in rural areas as well. Recent studies of sexual, drug and alcohol outcome expectancies suggest that the risk beliefs and sensation seeking play a critical role to maintain the high risk behaviors. This paper attempts to assess HIV risk behavior, risk beliefs and sensation seeking of young adults and also to explore the relationship between risk beliefs and sensation seeking with HIV risk behaviours across gender and locale. Sample of the present study included 200 young adults (100 urban and 100 rural) comprising of 50 males and 50 females for each group between the age range of 19-26 years. To assess the participants HIV risk behaviors and risk beliefs, checklists were developed by the researchers on the basis of HIV/AIDS related literature and opinion of experts. To assess the Sensation seeking of the respondents, the Sensation seeking scale V originally developed by Zuckerman and his associates (1980) and standardized on Indian Population by Basu et al. (1993) was used to measure sensation seeking. The findings of the present study reveal that male respondents are higher in HIV risk behavior, risk beliefs and sensation seeking than female respondents and urban young adults are significantly higher in HIV risk behaviors and risk beliefs than rural young adults. In terms of Sensation Seeking, there is significant mean difference between Urban Males and Rural Male respondents except TAS subscale. And lastly, Urban Females are significantly higher in total SS and TAS subscale only than Rural Female respondents. Moreover, present paper also reveals that risk beliefs is positively and significantly correlated with HIV risk behaviours among all the four groups whereas overall Sensation seeking is positively correlated with HIV Risk Behaviour but significantly correlated only in Urban respondents. The present findings suggest that cognitive behavioral interventions may be an effective way to modify the risky beliefs and reducing sensation seeking among young adults so as motivate them to refrain from risky behaviours for slowing down the spread of HIV infection.

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Pages: 541-547
Priyanka Shukla (Shree Ramswaroop Memorial University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh)
Madhurima Pradhan (Department of Psychology, Lucknow University, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh)