Fear of AIDS and Homophobia Scales in an ethnic population of university students

This replication extended R. A. Bouton et al.'s (1987) Fear of AIDS and Homophobia Scales to an ethnic sample of university students in an attempt to understand the relation between the expression of fear of HIV/AIDS and homophobia in ethnic groups. The results of the present study suggest that ethnic groups have a greater fear of HIV/AIDS, as they were more homophobic than the sample surveyed by R. A. Bouton et al. Although the correlation between fear of AIDS and homophobia was significant, results suggest the relation between them is weaker than it was 20 years prior to the present study. The ethnic populations represented in this study did not have greater fear of AIDS by gender. Considering ethnicity, female and male participants showed significant differences in homophobia. As in the original study, male participants were more homophobic than were female participants.