Learning from Norwegian experience: attempts to mobilize the youth culture to fight the AIDS epidemic
Traeen, B.
Aids Education and Prevention Official Publication of the International Society for Aids Education Suppl: 43-56
1992
ISSN/ISBN: 0899-9546 PMID: 1389870 Document Number: 321457
Data on 1855 17-19 year olds in Norway were analyzed to determine how aware they were of a national AIDS prevention campaign and their participation in its activities. Only 27.5% knew about the campaign. The message indirectly referred to AIDS. 56.8% of them did not realize that AIDS was the key message. The most familiar element of the campaign was the rock concert on TV (24%) followed by hearing the campaign song (14.9%), seeing the campaign song's video (8%), and reading the campaign novel (6.6%). Younger teenagers were more likely to have been aware of the concert and the campaign video than older teenagers. Teenagers with high educational aspirations and those living in a rural setting had a higher general awareness of the campaign than did those with lower aspirations and living in larger cities. Adolescents with much knowledge about sexuality were more aware of the campaign than those who did not. Those teenagers who often spoke to parents and friends about sex and to friends about their risk of HIV infection had a higher general awareness of the campaign than their less communicative counterparts. Rural adolescents were more likely to be aware of campaign activities in their area than the urban adolescents. Most teenagers (63.4%) learned about activities by reading the newspaper. Condom use was basically the same among teenagers who were familiar with the campaign as it was with those who were not familiar with it. The campaign primarily affected teenagers who already had been motivated to use protection during intercourse. These results indicated that the campaign did not improve consistency between knowledge and behavior among adolescents. The project designers did not study media habits of adolescents before the campaign. The campaign probably would have been more successful if they had done so and if the message had been more direct and specific.