Development of a new instrument to assess AIDS-related attitudes among Spanish youngsters

This paper aims to describe the psychometric properties of a new brief multidimensional scale to measure HIV/AIDS related attitudes for adolescents, the HIV Attitudes Scale (HIV-AS). Exploratory analysis aimed to find the theory-driven structure and to develop an empirically derived factor structure for HIV-AS, which was tested with a confirmatory factor analysis. Factorial invariance was studied across gender and age, and multigroup structural equation approach was used in order to compare the groups. Reliability, convergent and discnmmant validity were examined. The analyses were based on a sample of 1216 Spanish adolescents. The instrument consists of 12 items distributed across four major factors: 1) Attitudes towards safe sex when there are obstacles, 2) Attitudes towards the HIV test, 3) Attitudes towards condom use, and 4) Attitudes towards people living with the AIDS. The HIV-AS shows good validity and internal reliability and equivalent four-factor structure across gender and the three age groups studied. It can be consider as a capable and parsimonious self-report scale for assessing major aspects of HIV/AIDS-related attitudes for adolescents.