Although many interventions have been implemented in efforts to contain the AIDS epidemic, few have been theoretically based, targeted to the specific needs of a particular group, and adequately evaluated. To help address this situation, the overall objective of this competing continuation project is to utilize a conceptually based, highly generalizable model to guide group-specific AIDS risk reduction intervention and evaluation research in several populations of interest: university students, gay men, African American, Hispanic American, and white high school youth, and hard=to-reach gay men and out-of-school adolescents. Our AIDS risk reduction model holds that AIDS preventive behavior is a joint function of individual's information about AIDS risk and AIDS prevention, their motivation to reduce AIDS risk, and their behavioral skills for performing the specific acts involved in AIDS risk reduction. Our conceptualization also holds that to reduce AIDS risk in a particular population, it is first necessary to ascertain that population's existing level of AIDS risk reduction knowledge, to understand the unique motivational determinants of risk reduction behavior within the group and to determine the level of risk reduction behavioral skills within the group. Next, based on these data, interventions may be designed to address group-specific deficits in knowledge, motivation, behavioral skills, and ultimately, AIDS preventive behavior. Finally, the model specifies that evaluation research must be performed to determine whether intervention-induced changes have occurred in information, motivation, behavioral skills, and risk behavior, and to elucidate to what extent changes in information, motivation, and behavioral skills are related to changes in AIDS risk behavior. The information--motivation-behavior skills model is based on well articulated, well researched social psychological principles (e.g., Byrne, 1983; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), and has received strong empirical support in our initial NIMH-supported research.
The specific aims of this competing continuation project follow from our information-- motivation-behavioral skills conceptualization, and from our view of the importance of first assessing group-specific levels of these factors, then using the data to design group specific interventions, then evaluating intervention impact on information, motivation, and behavioral skills in our initial NIMH-sponsored research, """"""""tailored"""""""" group-specific interventions have been designed to alter information, motivation, behavioral skills, and AIDS risk behavior in several target groups of interest. Our first specific aim is to pilot test and to implement these interventions with several populations: university students, gay male affinity group members, and African American, Hispanic American, and white high school youth. Our second specific aim is to conduct experimental evaluation research, utilizing wide array of direct and indirect measures, to determine whether the interventions have had the desired impact on AIDS risk reduction information, motivation, and behavioral skills, and to explore how these changes are related to AIDS risk reduction behavior. Our third specific aim is to use our model to design, implement, and evaluate AIDS risk behavior change interventions in hard-to-reach populations of unaffiliated gay men and out-of-school adolescents. This research program is designed to provide a highly generalizable technology that may be applied to understanding and modifying AIDS risk behavior in diverse target groups.
| Malloy, T E; Fisher, W A; Albright, L et al. (1997) Interpersonal perception of the AIDS risk potential of persons of the opposite sex. Health Psychol 16:480-6 |
| Fisher, W A; Fisher, J D; Rye, B J (1995) Understanding and promoting AIDS-preventive behavior: insights from the theory of reasoned action. Health Psychol 14:255-64 |
| Fisher, J D; Fisher, W A; Williams, S S et al. (1994) Empirical tests of an information-motivation-behavioral skills model of AIDS-preventive behavior with gay men and heterosexual university students. Health Psychol 13:238-50 |
| Fisher, J D; Fisher, W A (1992) Changing AIDS-risk behavior. Psychol Bull 111:455-74 |
