Mass-media and prevention of HIV infection and drug abuse

The results of a cognitive survey of teenagers

Abstract

Several interventions regarding the prevention of HIV infection and drug abuse have been carried out over the past few years: television and radio commercials, leaflets distributed in the schools, airports and in magazines, videotapes and books. It had now become necessary to check the effectiveness of these interventions or rather the expectations/results ratio also because new information programs will be produced. This was the reason that encouraged the authors of this article to carry out a survey among teen-agers (the target favoured by the above mentioned programs) which aimed to evaluate their degree of satisfaction with what they leamt. For the study 2758 students of the last three years of scientific and classical high schools and teacher training institutes were interviewed using a questionnaire: the male and female students all lived in urban areas in various Italian regions, in north, centrai, and south ltaly.