Summary

Edward Room, Michael Grover and Edgar Todd (1997) conducted a confirmatory study entitled HIV Testing in a High Risk Population. This study was designed to examine the factors that promote or transform this community hazard, which led to an appealing question, what factors promote and impede this high risk population of African communities from utilizing the HIV prevention and testing methods? This research question gave rise to a Hypothesis that there are demographic, behavioural and attitudinal factors that are responsible for hindering and encouraging the people to seek HIV testing and prevention methods.

To test the hypothesis, a two-year period “hub and spoke” participatory research was conducted and included seventy workers from various African community based organizations, targeting specifically five African communities by communicating both formally and informally. In addition, twenty-five volunteers from the target communities were recruited and trained, before advancing the social venues where they dispensed flyers and administered questionnaires. All data gathered, were presented afterwards using STATA.

After analyzing the data, it revealed that for both genders some factors that promoted HIV testing were increasing age and diagnosis with an STI. However, there were high rates for both genders who admitted that they never had an HIV test because they anticipated themselves at high risk of catching HIV. Moreover, the study recognised that sexual health is needed among the African communities and suggested that even though the rates were high, HIV testing was driven by actual or perceived HIV risks and more work should be undertaken to eliminate the stigma attached to HIV testing. Furthermore, the study encountered several limitations, such as, selection bias in terms of recruitment.