AIDS: What You and Your Friends Need to Know — A Lesson Plan for Adolescents

The AIDS knowledge and attitudes of students attending an urban high school in Seattle were pretested. Subsequently, a 50-minute AIDS lesson plan was designed using the findings. Instruction occurred one month following the pretest, with a posttest administered one week after instruction. Significant increases in knowledge about AIDS, and parallel changes in tolerant and compassionate beliefs about people with AIDS were observed. Learning outcomes were retained at retesting eight weeks after instruction. Prior to receiving the AIDS lesion, 34% of students listed schools as their source of learning about AIDS. Schools became the major source of learning (82%) after one hour of instruction.