Content area
Full Text
AIDS Behav (2009) 13:11601177 DOI 10.1007/s10461-009-9593-3
REVIEW PAPER
From Conceptualizing to Measuring HIV Stigma: A Review of HIV Stigma Mechanism Measures
Valerie A. Earnshaw Stephenie R. Chaudoir
Published online: 28 July 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract Recent analyses suggest that lack of clarity in the conceptualization and measurement of HIV stigma at an individual level is a signicant barrier to HIV prevention and treatment efforts. In order to address this concern, we articulate a new framework designed to aid in clarifying the conceptualization and measurement of HIV stigma among individuals. The HIV Stigma Framework explores how the stigma of HIV elicits a series of stigma mechanisms, which in turn lead to deleterious outcomes for HIV uninfected and infected people. We then apply this framework to review measures developed to gauge the effect of HIV stigma since the beginning of the epidemic. Finally, we emphasize the utility of using three questions to guide future HIV stigma research: who is affected by, how are they affected by, and what are the outcomes of HIV stigma?
Keywords Stigma Prejudice Discrimination
Scales Measurement
Since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, researchers have noted that the stigma associated with HIV is a considerable barrier to HIV prevention and treatment efforts. Attention to stigma has steadily increased throughout the course of the epidemic, even becoming the focus of the World AIDS Campaign for the years 20022003 [1]. Despite this
attention, HIV stigma continues to be a signicant barrier to HIV prevention and treatment efforts nearly 30 years after the start of the epidemic.
Recent analyses have noted that the lack of a comprehensive conceptual framework with which to study the effects of HIV stigma is a core reason why HIV stigma continues to be such a formidable barrier [2, 3]. Whereas a number of theorists have developed elegant conceptual frameworks to understand the structural and social processes that contribute to the creation and maintenance of stigma [4, 5], existing theorizing has yet to delineate a framework for understanding how stigma impacts individuals [2]. Existing conceptual frameworks have not clearly identied how individuals experience HIV stigma in ways that may affect their psychological, health, and behavioral outcomes and, in turn, fuel the epidemic. Given that individual level interventions are a...