Development of a scale to assess knowledge on situations and hiv-related risk behaviours in youth and young adults in a latin american context

Abstract

This study reports the development of a scale to assess knowledge about risky sexual behaviour. The sample is composed of 1037 young people and young adults (540 women and 482 men) from the 5 main cities of the northern part of Chile. The final version of the scale has 12 items divided into 2 dimensions: Knowledge about risk behaviour; and knowledge about non-risk behaviour. Results provide evidence of validity based on internal structure, through ESEM (CFI=.99;TLI=.99: RMSEA=.02), and based on the relationship with other variables, through SEM, as well as adequate levels of reliability and evidence of invariance by sex. Findings suggest that this scale is a brief instrument with broad psychometric support for use in equivalent samples.