Programme de bourses "Echanges Universitaires"

First year students’ questionnaire on attitudes towards HIV/AIDS

The background to this small research project was the initiation of a new compulsory core curriculum for first year students at UNAM (university of Namibia) with the beginning of the study year in January 2003. This interdisciplinary lecture was thought to lay a basis and contained therefore knowledge on ETHICS, GENDER and HIV/AIDS. It was approved by the senate and designed by a committee of lecturers from different faculties.
As there were not enough venues available at UNAM for about 1000 students, half of the first year students had to attend this half semester course (2 hours/week) in the first semester and half in the second semester.

Data on UNAM students’ attitudes towards HIV/AIDS were rare to find. Therefore the questionnaire was drafted to provide baseline answers about attitudes foremost from young people, so that adequate prevention measures could be developed. The second goal of the questionnaire was to use it as an instrument of evaluation for the core curriculum. For this purpose it should be administered a second time at the end of the study year, during registration period of the next year respectively, to see whether there had occurred any changes in the students’ attitudes towards HIV/AIDS. The information obtained would help to adjust the curriculum to the needs of the students.

To administer the questionnaire the orientation week was used, a time for the new students, during which they get information on all relevant aspects of their new life as students. At the time reserved only 152 students out of about 1000 were present. Therefore the questionnaire had to be filled in during the following registration week. In this way a total of 850 questionnaires eventually were available.

The analysis was thought to be done by SPSS-program. A first report has to be written during the ongoing semester. A second report will be done at the beginning of the new study year, including a comparison between the results of both surveys as well as the presentation of the results from the new first year students 2004. The last report will be handed out during the first semester 2005, containing the comparison between the survey results from 2004.

Prof. Dr. I.E. Plattner, department of psychology, UNAM, is the supervisor for the whole research project. Dr. E.Lutaaya from the department of agriculture and natural science, UNAM, advised some of his students to tape the data into the computer. He personally did some basic analysis.

Contact addresses :
In Switzerland: Jeanine Kosch, INTERTEAM, Untergeissenstein 10/12, 6000 Luzern
interteam@bluewin.ch
In Namibia : Dr. Theres Schiwow, Private Bag 13301, UNAM, 340 Mandume Ndemufayo Ave, Windhoek, Namibia
schiwowa@iway.na