You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Qualitative
People at high risk for STDs used a variety of primary and secondary prevention strategies

https://doi.org/10.1136/ebn.5.3.92

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    McDonald MA, Thomas JC, Eng E.When is sex safe? Insiders' views on sexually transmitted disease prevention and treatment.Health Educ Behav2001 Oct;28:624–42OpenUrlCrossRefPubMedWeb of Science

    QUESTION: How do people at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) understand and practice STD prevention?

    Design

    Ethnography.

    Setting

    A rural county in North Carolina, USA.

    Participants

    38 low income people ≥18 years of age (20 men, 33 African-American) were identified from an STD clinic and a county jail, and by social service professionals. 24 of the participants reported having had >1 STD.

    Methods

    Indepth interviews of 1–2 hours were held with each participant. Questions focused on sexual behaviour and condom use, drug use, STD care seeking and self treatment, and sexual risk taking in relation to curable STDs such as gonorrhoea, chlamydia, and syphilis. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. Codes, common patterns, and emergent themes were identified. Sections of 4 interviews were excluded because of data contamination by an inexperienced interviewer.

    Main findings

    The findings reflect an insider's (emic) view of how to protect oneself from STDs and why. Primary and secondary prevention strategies were identified. The most …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Source of funding: National Institutes of Health.

    • For correspondence: Dr M A McDonald, Department of Community and Family Medicine, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, USA. mcdon055{at}mc.duke.edu