AEGiS-APPJ: Should Someone with AIDS Be Allowed to Attend School? A Statewide Survey of Adolescents

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1988. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Should Someone with AIDS Be Allowed to Attend School? A Statewide Survey of Adolescents

AIDS & Public Policy Journal 3, no. 1 (Winter 1988): 17-20
Lee Strunin et al.

Results of a 1986 statewide random-sample survey of 860 Massachusetts adolescents 16 to 19 years of age indicate that 23 percent of adolescents feel that someone with AIDS should not be allowed to attend school. Adolescents with this opinion were most likely to be male, to have not discussed AIDS with an adult family member, to misunderstand how the virus is transmitted, and to be fearful of contracting the disease themselves. Compared to other adolescents, those not wanting someone with AIDS in school were less likely to want AIDS education in the form of question and answer sessions and were more likely to believe that there is already too much information on AIDS available to teenagers. As the numbers of AIDS cases increase, more adolescents are likely to come into contact with persons with AIDS. School intervention programs should address not only how to avoid transmission but also how to respond to persons with AIDS. The question of whether fear about AIDS prevents some adolescents from learning about the disease should be explored.
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