Factors Affecting HIV/AIDS Stigma in Nursing Students

HIV/AIDS stigma is recognized as a barrier to prevention, treatment, the process of socialization, and support. Manifestations of HIV stigma include any prejudice, humiliation, or discrimination directed within the family, community, institution, discriminatory laws or policies, or through self-stigma (internalized). This study aimed to identify factors affecting HIV/AIDS stigma in nursing students. This study used a cross-sectional design with purposive sampling and was conducted in a nursing academy in East Jakarta, Indonesia. The sample was 153 respondents in the nursing academy. Data were collected using the International AIDS Questionnaire-Chinese Version (IAQ-C) to identify the knowledge of respondents and the AIDS-Related Stigma Scale to identify stigma. Data were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney test, Kruskal Wallis test, and Spearman correlation test. 85.6% of respondents were female, 37.9% were 3rd grade, 62.7% had no partner, 64.1% were quite religious, 94.44% were heterosexual, and 90.91% of the males and 93.73% of the females did not have any sexual experience. The mean age was 20.11 years, the mean knowledge score was 58.41, and the mean stigma score was 10.02. 87.58% of respondents knew information about HIV-AIDS from the internet. There was a significant relationship between sexual experience and HIV/AIDS stigma (p-value = 0.047), and between attitude and HIV/AIDS stigma (p-value = 0.007) in the nursing students. There was no significant impact of age (p-value = 0.298), gender (p-value = 0.397), relationship status (p-value = 0.769), or knowledge (p-value = 0.065). This study recommends improving nursing student attitudes to reduce HIV/AIDS stigma. Keywords: HIV/AIDS, stigma, knowledge, attitudes, nursing studen