Health Beliefs, Self-Efficacy and Condom Use: How College Students Respond to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic

This study proposes that health beliefs and self-efficacy are related to condom use among college students. An anonymous survey, developed to pursue correlates of condom use, was administered to 370 college students. The survey consisted of a variety of single- item measures of demographics and sexual behaviors, as well as measures which assessed self-efficacy, perceived benefits and barriers of condom use, and perceived susceptibility and severity of HIV/AIDS. Correlation and regression analysis was conducted to test the relationship between these variables and condom use. The results show that certain dimensions of self-efficacy were positively related to condom use. Measures assessing perceived barriers to condom use were negatively related to condom use. Scale development issues, implications of these findings and recommendations for future research are presented.