ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the circumstances surrounding attempts to persude children to avoid behaviors that put them at risk for AIDS, and explores the criteria of each medium that render it more or less helpful in this regard. It looks at children’s perceptions of health and their responsibility for its protection, the potential of interpersonal and mass media messages for conveying health-related information to young people and the utility of traditional and nontraditional methods of persuasion in encouraging young people to reduce their risk for AIDS. Research on family communication patterns and problem-solving capacities suggests that the families play an important role in the success of any community- or school-based AIDS intervention for children. One aspect of media dependency theory renders it especially relevant to the issue of AIDS education. Since the children most at risk for AIDS are minority children and those deprived in terms of socioeconomic status—reality training may be the last thing they need or want.
