The perceived social context of AIDS: study of inner-city sexually transmitted disease clinic patients.

The present study investigated perceptions of AIDS as a social problem relative to 10 other problems in a sample of 194 inner-city sexually transmitted disease (STD) clinic patients. Within-subjects analyses showed that AIDS was viewed as a more serious problem than housing, alcoholism, and child care, while AIDS was less of a problem than employment, drug abuse, crime, discrimination, and teen pregnancy, and no different from transportation and health care. Factor analysis was used to identify the interrelationships among social problems as perceived by STD patients. For men, factor analysis showed that AIDS was most closely related to crime, drug abuse, teen pregnancy, and discrimination, with these problems constituting the first factor and accounting for most of the variance in the analysis. Men also placed AIDS with alcoholism and child care on the third factor accounting for little variance. For women, however, AIDS clustered most closely with alcoholism and child care, accounting for a minimal amount of variance in the analysis. Results further showed that perceptions of social problems among women correlated with HIV-risk-related behaviors. The structural context of social problems, within which AIDS is embedded, is discussed with reference to HIV-AIDS-prevention interventions.