Design and validation of a scale of attitudes towards HIV prevention in adolescents

Abstract

Background: Attitudes are determining factors in HIV prevention, mostly in vulnerable populations such as adolescents. Aim: To design and evaluate content validity and factorial structure of a scale to measure the level of attitudes towards sexual prevention of HIV in secondary school students. Methods: Psychometric and cross-sectional study. The design of the scale, based on the identification of protective and risk factors, allowed the generation of the initial version, which was validated in terms of content, evaluating clarity, relevance, sufficiency and relevance, content validity index and coefficient. Through a pilot test on a sample of 299 students, the discriminant capacity of the items, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and adjustment indices were evaluated. Reliability was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha. Results: Content validation allowed us to obtain a content validity ratio of 0.87 and a content validity index of 0.88. The EFA allowed us to obtain a more parsimonious final version of 21 items, 4 factors and a reliability of 0.76. Excellent fit indices were obtained: RMSEA=0.044, SRMR=0.036, TLI=0.906 and CFI =0.941. Conclusions: The scale is valid and reliable. The final version is parsimonious, easy to apply and suitable for community diagnoses.