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This study examine the relative and potentially competing roles of teachers, peers, and online information in shaping adolescent HIV prevention behaviour, and to test whether emotional information sources mediate these associations. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 390 students aged 15-19 years from a public senior high school. Measures included teacher role, peer role, online information exposure, emotional information source, HIV knowledge (HIV-KQ-18), and HIV prevention behaviour (SBAHAQ). Analyses comprised descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, hierarchical regression adjusting for age and sex, and bootstrapped mediation (PROCESS Model 4; 5,000 resamples). Adolescents reported moderate HIV prevention behaviour (M = 65.26, SD = 5.52) but relatively low HIV knowledge (M = 7.84, SD = 3.26). The final model explained about 10% of the variance, indicating modest predictive power. Emotional information source was the strongest predictor of prevention behaviour, while teacher role showed a small negative association and online exposure was not significant. Mediation analysis revealed indirect effects via emotional sources for teacher and peer roles, but not for online exposure. These findings highlight emotional pathways as mediators of peer and teacher influences on adolescent HIV prevention behaviour, beyond direct knowledge transmission. Prevention strategies should combine accurate information with culturally grounded, emotionally engaging approaches.
Lindayani et al. (Tue,) studied this question.