DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2017.v05i11.026

Pages: 1738-1743

Reproductive health is a serious concern not only for adults but also for adolescents. The present study was conducted on students of Colleges from January 2014 to November 2014 to evaluate their KAPs regarding HIV/AIDS, living in rural areas of the State of West Bengal, India. Pre-coded questionnaire was used to generate the data and analysis was made by SPSS version 20.0. F-value was calculated and p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results show that all the students had heard about AIDS before the interview but the knowledge about transmission, prevention and control about HIV/AIDS was quite low. Negative attitudes towards HIV/AIDS were much more while practices related to HIV/AIDS were significantly risk full. The awareness level of students on physical changes during adolescences is significantly higher in Science students followed by Arts students, knowledge about HIV/AIDS and its mode of transmission is significantly greater in Science students, but higher level of misconceptions is found among Arts students. The current study highlighted that in spite of higher level of knowledge about HIV/AIDS transmission and prevention in the studied students, appreciable level of misbelieves regarding transmission of HIV/AIDS was still prevailing among both Science and Arts students which may be the routes of stigma associated with the disease and the huge gap between awareness and attitude towards HIV/AIDS.