Many of the young adults who constitute the bulk of the Australian university student population engage in a number of sexual practices currently considered by health authorities to place them at risk of contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The present study combines data obtained by self-administered survey questionnak from samples of students at the University of Sydney (1987) and Macquarie University (1988), relating to their sexual behaviours, information possessed about means of HIV transmission, and their beliefs about the appropriate behavioural measures to reduce the chances of infection.Five scales of comlated sets of items were identified from the belief data as indicating particular strategies for AIDS avoidance. These related to reliance on regular partner, condom use, avoidance of certain sorts of people, asking about partners' history, and mass screening. The endorsement of particular strategies differs according to respondents' sex and/or whether or not they are sexually expenend. It is suggested that any effective AIDS education campaign targeted at the university population will need to take account of students' preexisting views as to how to protect themselves, and that some of these views may be based upon values and prejudices which predate the AIDS epidemic.There can be little doubt that the Australian student population engages in a number of risky sexual practices with regard to the transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), even though the paucity of Australian data requires us to generalise to this group from what is known of the North Americm adolescent and college student populations. The bulk of the Australian university student population falls into the category of young adult, With a short tail of adolescents at the Iowa end of its age range, and a long tail of mature adults at the upper end. Researchers in the United States have documented an increase amongst adolescents over the last couple of decades in the prevalence of premarital intercourse, in number of sexual partners, and participation in casual sex (see Baldwin & Baldwin, 1988). Sorenson (1973) identified two patterns of sexual relationship among non-viriginal adolescents, those of the "serial monogamist" and the "sexual adventurer." Although the frequencies will have changed, the Requests for reprints should be sent to June Crawford,
Psychology formally entered the Australian arena via university departments of Philosophy, commencing last century and taking its initial direction largely from Britain. The previous pattern of development of Australian psychology was more distinctive than is its present state. Although the influences of Germany and the United States have supplemented that of the parent country, it is difficult to discern any locally blended colouration in the discipline or the profession as they now appear. Somewhat distanced from the universities, applied psychology has flourished especially in the public sector beginning with the initial close liaison formed between psychology and education in a developing colonial society. The public impact of research and practice is by no means as apparent as in the United States or Britain. After a burgeoning in the 'sixties and early 'seventies, the present state is one of limited growth concurrent with the general recession.
The circumstance of the Aboriginal presence in Australia prior to white settlement resulted during the nineteenth century in spasmodic studies, often theory‐driven, directed at a comparison of the moral and intellectual competence of the blacks with that of the British and other races. The development early the next century of the Porteus Maze Test, cast as a particularly appropriate ability measure for nonliterates, contributed to a steady continuation of empirical research along similar lines until well after World War II. Some of this was driven by government and other administrative exigencies; overall it was characterized by decreasing attention to the nature/nurture issue.
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