Psychosocial Attributes of Safe Sex Behaviour to Prevent HIV Infection among Women in South Eastern Zone of Tigray

Abstract

This research seeks to contribute to the knowledge base used when designing health promotion or disease prevention programs that promote safe sex practices among sexually active women. A total of 240 females who are sexually active (15 to 49 years of age) were randomly selected. A composite measure of psychosocial attributes of safe sex behaviour namely the perceived susceptibility, the perceived severity; the perceived benefits and the perceived self-efficacy of condom use were used to gather the required data. Decision making index, perceived barriers of safe sex behaviour were also used to collect data. Interviews and Focus Group Discussions (FDG) were also used to strengthen the quantitative data.  Descriptive statistics, factor analysis, Univariate Analysis of Variance (UNI-NOVA) and Linear Regression were employed to analyze the datasets. Mass media, especially imparting HIV/AIDS education through TV spots, reality shows and drama have been found to be the most important source of knowledge about condom use. The factor analysis produced personal and sociocultural barriers of safe sex behaviour. The result reveals that the respondents relatively perceived personal attributes as potential barriers of condom use more than the sociocultural attributes. Marital status had statistically significant main effects on safe sex behaviour, where those who are married were less likely to use safer sex practice than their single counterparts. Decision making power, perceived severity and perceived benefits of condom use predicted the protective condom use among women. The results of the study provided an insight on how respondents’ safe sex behaviour are affected by contextual and psychosocial variables with recommendations for developing individual and/or community based sexually transmitted disease preventive programs accordingly. These would further enable sexually active women to make an informed decision about unprotected sex and promoting oneself for positive image of condom use.

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