Measuring Stigma
Additional survey items (from other surveys measuring stigma)

Excerpted from Evidence-based Generic Tools for Operational Research on HIV, Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer (ed.), 2008 (forthcoming), Geneva: World Health Organization.

Tables 1–4 (PDF or Word) present data collection questions for measuring key dimensions of stigma from different studies. In the tables, the items listed from each survey do not necessarily include all of the items used to measure stigma in that survey. Rather, the survey items presented in the tables were chosen to demonstrate the range of existing items and to highlight the similarities that exist across studies conducted in a wide range of contexts around the world.

The selected survey items for the general public have been utilized in a variety of contexts: communities in Tanzania (Nyblade and MacQuarrie 2006); northern Thailand (Boer and Emons 2004); Ethiopia (Banteyerga et al. 2004); Cape Town, South Africa (Brown 2004); a telephone survey with 1,978 randomly selected adults in the United States, conducted during 1996-1999 (Herek et al. 2002); the most recent version of the DHS survey, which is conducted in numerous developing countries worldwide (MEASURE DHS 2006); and a survey of 1,775 male truck drivers in Brazil (Pulerwitz et al 2008).

In addition to these surveys designed for the general public, this section includes items from survey tools that have been used to measure stigma and discrimination from the perspectives of people living with HIV and health workers in a variety of contexts: a survey of 318 adults living with HIV in the United States (Berger, Ferrans, and Lashley 2001); a survey conducted with 344 health care workers in Vietnamese hospitals (Institute for Social Development Studies, Horizons, and ICRW 2006); a survey of 373 health care providers in Mexico (Infante et al. 2006); a survey of 266 health care workers in rural India (Kermode et al. 2005); a survey of 884 hospital staff in India (Mahendra et al. 2007); a survey of people living with HIV in the Dominican Republic (Miric 2004); a survey of 1,021 health care professionals from four Nigerian states (Reis et al. 2005); a survey of 2,466 HIV-infected adults in the United States (Schuster et al. 2005); a survey for people living with HIV developed by the Asia Pacific Network for PLHA (Asia Pacific Network for PLHA 2004); a survey of 167 nurses in the United States (Froman and Owen 1997); and a survey of 57 people living with HIV in Nepal (Family Health International 2004).

 

Asia Pacific Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS. 2004. “AIDS discrimination in Asia.” Bangkok: APN+.

Banteyerga, H. et al. 2004. “Yichalaliko! Exploring HIV and AIDS stigma and related discrimination in Ethiopia: causes, manifestations, consequences, and coping mechanisms.” Addis Ababa: Miz-Hasab Research Center. 

Berger, B. E., C. E. Ferrans, and F. R. Lashley FR. 2001. “Measuring stigma in people with HIV: Psychometric assessment of the HIV stigma scale,” Research in Nursing and Health 24: 518–529.

Boer, H., and P. A. A. Emons. 2004. “Accurate and inaccurate HIV transmission beliefs, stigmatizing and HIV protection motivation in northern Thailand,” AIDS Care 16(2): 167–176.

Brown, B. M. 2004. “Measuring HIV/AIDS stigma,” CSSR Working Paper No. 74. Cape Town: Centre for Social Science Research.

Family Health International. 2004. Attitudes and beliefs towards people living with HIV/AIDS—Nepal.” Kathmandu: Family Health International.

Froman, R.D. and S. V. Owen. 1997. “Further validation of the AIDS attitude scale,” Research in Nursing and Health 20: 161–167.

Herek, G. M., J. P. Capitanio, and K. F. Widaman. 2002. “HIV-related stigma and knowledge in the United States: prevalence and trends, 1991–1999,” American Journal of Public Health 92(3): 371–377.

Infante, C. et al. 2006. "El estigma asociado al VIH/SIDA: el caso de los prestadores de servicios de salud en México [HIV/AIDS-related stigma and discrimination: the case of health care providers in Mexico],” Salud Publica Mex 48(2): 141–150.

Institute for Social Development Studies, Horizons Program, and International Center for Research on Women. 2006. “Reducing HIV-related stigma and discrimination in Vietnamese hospitals,” Horizons Research Update. Washington, DC: Population Council.

Kermode, M. et al. 2005. “HIV-related knowledge, attitudes and risk perception amongst nurses, doctors and other healthcare workers in rural India,” Indian Journal of Medical Research 122(3): 258–64.

Mahendra, Vaishali et al. 2007. “Understanding and measuring AIDS-related settings: A developing country perspective,” SAHARA Journal of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research Alliance 4(2): 616–625.

MEASURE DHS. 2006. “Model questionnaire with commentary for countries with the expanded HIV questions,” Basic Documentation No. 2. ORC Macro: Calverton, Maryland.

Miric, M. 2004. “Escala para la evaluacion del estigma sentido entre las personas VIH positiv as en la Republic Dominicana [Scale for the evaluation of felt stigma among HIV-positive individuals in the Dominican Republic],” Paradigmas 2(4).

Nyblade, Laura and Kerry MacQuarrie. 2006. “Can we measure HIV related stigma and discrimination? Current knowledge about quantifying stigma in developing countries.” Washington, DC: ICRW and Policy Project. 

Pulerwitz, Julie et al. 2008. “HIV-related stigma, service utilization, and status disclosure among truck drivers crossing the Southern borders in Brazil,” AIDS Care 20(2): 198–204.

Reis, C. et al. 2005. “Discriminatory attitudes and practices by health workers toward patients with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria,” PloS Medicine 2(8): 743–751.

Schuster, M. A. et al. 2005. “Perceived discrimination in clinical care in a nationally representative sample of HIV-infected adults receiving health care,” Journal of General Internal Medicine 20: 807–813.