Comparison of knowledge, attitudes, and sources of information related to Hansen's Disease (leprosy) among selected International students and United States students at the University of Tennessee

The major purpose of this investigation was to assess knowledge, attitudes, and sources of information about Hansen's Disease (HD), and to elicit opinions about HD and general disease prevalence held by selected International students and United States students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. A secondary purpose was to assess differences among knowledge, attitudes, and sources of information concerning HD and certain health related opinions when the respondents were placed in groups: International students in general; United States students; International students from countries designated to have high, moderate, or rare HD prevalence; and International students from countries designated to be industrialized or non-industrialized.

A survey instrument (including true-false statements, a semantic differential, checklist of sources of information, and questions concerning opinions) was administered and analyses were run on data collected from 156 subjects. Frequencies and percentages were obtained on all the subjects' responses, and certain data were used to compute chi-square statistics. Theta and gamma were used as measures of association in determining relationships among knowledge, attitudes, and sources of information concerning HD.

The primary findings involved the desire of the majority in all groups to have HD information included in health education programs. Also a majority of respondents selected "fuU discussion" of HD as appropriate in health education programs.

Based on some of the findings of this study, there are no associations among HD knowledge, HD attitudes, and sources of HD information.