Association of Information Sources and Knowledge on HIV/AIDS in Rural China.

Objective: To investigate the association between the number of available information sources on HIV/AIDS and HIV/AIDS-related knowledge in a rural population in China.

Design: We performed a cross-sectional survey on the number and types of sources of HIV/AIDS information available to rural residents of China and assessed HIV/AIDS-related knowledge in this population. We collected information from 5,355 Chinese rural residents and then correlated the results of the scores on knowledge to the numbers of information sources, and adjusted for age, sex, education and occupation.

Results: The sources of HIV/AIDs information reported by subjects included television, radio, newspapers, periodicals, discussions with neighbors and friends. There were significant differences in sources of information based on gender, occupation, educational level and age. The average number of information sources was 3.01 ± 1.74. The average score on the AIDS related knowledge questionnaire was 8.21 ± 4.23. Subjects who reported 6 sources of HIV/AIDS information had an average score of 11.67 ± 3.0 on the HIV/AIDS knowledge questionnaire. Subjects who reported between 3-7 sources of HIV/AIDS information had significantly higher scores than those who had 1,2 or 8 sources of information.

Conclusions: There is an association between HIV/AIDS knowledge and the number of available information sources. By increasing the sources, one could not always make more people curious or interested in HIV/AIDS knowledge.