Measuring medical and nursing students' attitudes toward AIDS

Investigated attitudes toward AIDS patients among medical and nursing students. Two separate cohorts of students (total N = 550) were surveyed to examine and then validate with confirmatory factor analysis the latent factor structure of such attitudes. Results indicate that a three-factor structure representing fear of contagion, negative emotions, and professional resistance provides a good fit to the data (goodness-of-fit index [GFI] = .92, parsimonious GFI = .67). We offer the resulting 15-item AIDS Attitudes Scale (AAS) as a reliable and valid measure for assessing health care students' attitudes toward working with AIDS patients. Our results suggest the presence of multiple predictors of such attitudes.