Talk Among Sexual Partners About AIDS: Interpersonal Communication for Risk Reduction or Risk Enhancement?

Abstract Public health officials have advised the public to engage in highly intimate interpersonal communication in order to facilitate AIDS prevention. In this context, talking about AIDS is assumed to be prerequisite to enacting AIDS-prevention strategies. However, many factors inhibit talking about AIDS with a sexual partner, and little is known about the manner in which people attempt such discussions. Present findings focus on the degree to which heterosexual college students, a group arguably at higher than average risk to AIDS, are enacting the advice to talk with their sexual partners about AIDS and the nature of those discussions. Data were collected via open-ended questions as part of a larger survey. Although two thirds of the heterosexual and sexually experienced respondents talked with their partners about AIDS, only one third of those who talked discussed "safer sex topics." Worse, only 6% of the respondents actually talked about condom use. Thus, few college students appear to be talking about AIDS as a precursor to condom use. Results question the validity of the assumption that talking about AIDS with a sexual partner facilitates AIDS prevention. Public health officials and health educators would be well advised not to emphasize talking about AIDS as a preventive action unless they stress that the purpose of the talk is to gain a partner's willingness to use a condom. Recommendations for future research include studying the relationship between talking about AIDS and condom use. In addition, strategies for saving face and reducing embarrassment in the course of negotiating condom use need to be investigated.