The long-term objective of this study is to improve HIV/AIDS communication programs for young people in sub-Saharan Africa. The proposed research will advance that goal by increasing understanding of the sociocultural context of HIV/AIDS and youth sexual behavior, with particular focus on cognitive and ideological dimensions. The study involves the secondary analysis of a sample of fictional narratives about HIV/AIDS written by young Africans in 2005 as submissions to a scriptwriting contest. Traditionally, HIV/AIDS education in Africa has focused on providing young people with factual information about modes of transmission and means of prevention. In their creative writing about AIDS, young people contextualize that abstract information within a story of their own invention. This exercise tests their understanding of the basic facts about HIV/AIDS. It also calls upon them to draw on their own lived or imagined experience and on other culturally-determined sources of social understanding to create context, meaning, and values. The stories thus provide unique insights into young people's explanatory models about HIV/AIDS, and into their appropriation of dominant cultural norms around gender, sexuality, and stigma. The project's specific aims include theoretical and methodological components: (1) to analyze how young Africans imagine, represent, and understand HIV/AIDS as a social phenomenon; (2) to compare young people's social representations of HIV/AIDS in African countries with contrasting epidemiological profiles; (3) to develop innovative methodologies for the analysis of fictional narratives as a source of understanding of sociocultural context. The research methodology is qualitative, with an emphasis on in-depth understanding of young people's representations of HIV/AIDS. A systematic analysis of a sample of 840 (~4%) of the 22,000 stories written in 2005 will be undertaken. The sample will be drawn from stories submitted in the West African Republic of Burkina Faso and the Southern African kingdom of Swaziland (adult HIV prevalence 2% and 33% respectively). This cross-cultural research will complement and enrich existing epidemiological and ethnographic studies on youth and HIV/AIDS in Africa. It will identify strengths and weaknesses of HIV communication for young people in Africa to date, and formulate recommendations for improved practice. ? ? ?
