A Comparison of Male and Female High School Student's Awareness, Perception, and Performance toward AIDS in Babol

AIDS is one of the greatest health issues in many countries in the 21th century. The current research aimed at determineing the level of high school students’ awareness, perception, and performance concerning AIDS in Babol. The current research is a descriptive study. Based on the goals of this research selected using multistage random sampling method and 78-item questionnaires, 507 students were chosen as the research participants and tested by the researchers. The collected data was then analyzed by using SPSS 16 Software. The results showed that most of the participants had an average level of awareness, perception, and performance. The general score of awareness of female students was 65.47% that was significantly higher than the male students, which was 53.01 %. The are rage for all the participating students in awarness was 58.95%. The score of AIDS perception for female students was 56.03 ± 8.747 that was significantly higher than the male,s score (47.50 ± 5.313). The AIDS perception score for all the participating students was 51.9 ± 8.44. The average score of performance against AIDS for female students was 4.39 ± 1.42 that was significantly higher than the male,s score (2.86 ± 0.81) (P=0.000). The average performance score of all the participants was 3.46 ± 1.39. The range of average related to the level of awareness, perception, and performance was fair to good. The results showed that the female students were better than the male ones. Thus the instruction of the parents is highly emphasized.