AIDS victims and heterosexual attitudes.
This study reports on the development of a Likert scale that measures attitudes toward AIDS victims (ATAV) in five phases. A total of 582 undergraduate (means age = 24.2) completed the survey forms, 249 males and 333 females. The results for Phase 1 yielded a scale with high part-whole correlations (.62-.90, p less than .001), corrected split-half reliability (.87, p less than .001), and alpha coefficients (.91, p less than .001). The following phases yielded significant correlations between the ATAV scale and attitudes toward homosexuals (.60, p less than .001), homosexual parenting (.64, p less than .001), other minority groups (.33, .37, p less than .001), capital punishment (-.27 p less than .001), and sexually liberal attitudes (.22, .37, .23, p, less than .025). Attitudes toward homosexuals are the central component in attitudes toward AIDS victims. A varimax rotated factor analysis of the ATAV yielded one primary factor accounting for 85.9% of the variance.
Department of Psychology, Oregon State University, Corvallis 97331-5303.
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Larsen
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Serra
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Long
D000163:Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome / Q000523:psychology* / Q000635:transmission; D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health; D005260:Female; D006716:Homosexuality / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011594:Psychometrics; D012307:Risk Factors; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D012934:Social Isolation