Abstract

LIRIOS, Cruz García; GUILLEN, Javier Carrión; VALDES, Jorge Hernández  and  AGUAYO, José Marcos Bustos. Social workers' attitudes toward carriers of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in community health centers. Salud & Sociedad [online]. 2013, vol.4, n.1, pp. 60-68. ISSN 0718-7475.

Health systems face problems of quality of service and medical malpractice which undermine their role and their medical calling and which also discredit medical care. In the context of such problems, it is essential to study the relationship between health care professionals and users of health insurance. The objective of this study was to establish the psychometric properties of an instrument that measured norms and attitudes toward HIV carriers. Using a sample of 130 professional social workers, the authors estimated the reliability, validity and the relationships between sociodemographic, socio-economic, and attitudinal norms. From a structural model (X2 = 16,734, 13 df; p = .000, RMR = .000, GFI = 1.00), the principal finding was the positive relationship between norm and attitude (β = .70) and the negative indirect relationship between sex and attitude through the norm (β = -.47). The scope and limits of these findings are discussed with reference to other studies, and a recommendation to expand the study to other health professionals and to include other cognitive variables in the model set is made.

Keywords : Health; HIV; gender; norms and attitude.

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