HIV-Risk Index: Development and Validation of a Brief Risk Index for Hispanic Young People

The prevalence of HIV risk behaviors among young people facilitates the spread of HIV, in particular regarding unsafe sex behavior, although this trend is different within this population. For this reason, identifying the riskier young population is required to prevent HIV infection. The main purpose of this study was to develop and validate a risk index to assess the different sexual HIV risk exposure among Hispanic Young people. For this purpose, 9861 Spanish young people were randomly distributed into two groups (derivation and validation group). According to the results, the factor analyses grouped the nine items of the HIV- risk index into two factors (factor 1, direct sexual risk indicators and factor 2, indirect sexual risk indicators) with an equal structure for men and women by a multi-group confirmatory factor analysis. The variance explained was 54.26 %. Moreover, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient revealed high internal reliability (α = .79) and the convergent validity supported its evidence based on different HIV risk indexes. Therefore, the HIV-risk index seem to be a rigorous and valid measure to estimate HIV risk exposure among young people.The authors acknowledge young people who have participated in our studies during these years, as well as some colleagues who have contributed to them such as Maite Edo, Mª Carmen Guirado, Jose Miguel Bravo, Sandra Gómez and Cristina Cassà. Authors’ Contribution Rafael Ballester-Arnal & María Dolores Gil-Llario contributed to the design of the study, obtaining funding, and study supervision.Rafael Ballester-Arnal, María Dolores Gil-Llario, Jesús Castro-Calvo & Cristina Giménez-García participated in recruiting participants, collecting data, analysis/interpretation of data, and writing of the paper. Funding This study has been associated with different projects funded by Generalitat Valenciana (B2/2001, B3/2002), Fundación para la Investigación y Prevención del Sida en España, FIPSE (Exp. 12436/03; Exp. 36639/07) and Universitat Jaume I/Fundación Bancaja (P1.1 B 2004-18; P1.1 B2006-19)