Social representations of HIV/AIDS in five central European and eastern European countries: a multidimensional analysis

Abstract

Cognitive processing models of risky sexual behaviour have proliferated in the two decades since the first reporting of HIV/AIDS, but far less attention has been paid to individual and group representations of the epidemic and the relationship between these representations and reported sexual behaviours. In this study, 494 business people and medics from Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Poland and Russia sorted free associations around HIV/AIDS in a matrix completion task. Exploratory factor and multidimensional scaling analyses revealed two main dimensions (labelled ‘Sex’ and ‘Deadly disease’), with significant cultural and gender variations along both dimension scores. Possible explanations for these results are discussed in the light of growing concerns over the spread of the epidemic in this region.

Acknowledgments

This paper was supported by a group grant to the authors from the Soros Foundation and led by the first author (1998/56). We would like to thank Ahto Külvet and Andu Rämmer for their help in collecting data and Grazyna Wieczorkowska-Nejtardt and Shalom Schwartz for their statistical advice on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

HIV/AIDS cases and estimated infection have increased very rapidly in Estonia since the time of this study, with the increase between 2000 and 2001 described by UNAIDS (2002b) as ‘extremely alarming’. During 2001, 1,470 new HIV-positive cases were reported, with 89% of these aged under 30, and an estimated 7,700 people were living with HIV/AIDS in Estonia at the end of 2001. AIDS cases have also increased relatively sharply in Georgia since the time of this data collection, with a total of 310 cases registered by the Infectious Diseases, AIDS and Clinical Immunology Research Centre in Tbilisi by June 2002 (UNAIDS, 2002a). In both countries, infection increase can be largely traced to the injection of illegal drugs and needle and syringe sharing.