Social Support & HIV/STDs Infections among a Probability-Based Sample of Rural Married Migrant Women in Shandong Province, China

Background

The increasing population of marriage-based migrant women is disproportionally affected by AIDS/STDs in China, and social support plays a critical role. This study aims to describe the social support level received by married migrant women in rural areas in Shandong province in comparison to non-migrant local women, identifies the relevant factors of this social support condition among married migrant women, and observes the correlation between social support level and infection status of AIDS and STDs among this group.

Methods

A probability-based sample of 1,076 migrant and 1,195 local women were included in the study. A pre-tested field questionnaire was administered to participants through a direct face-to-face interview. Questionnaire contained questions on socio-demographic information, AIDS and STDs prevalence information and Social Support Rating Scale (SSRS) which measures objective support, subjective support, and utilization of social support.

Results

Compared to local women, married migrant women had lower levels of social support in most dimensions. Multi-variable analysis revealed that relationship with spouse, family average income, number of children, education, engagement and claimed reasons of moving have various correlations with one or all dimensions of social support scores. Higher social support is also related to awareness of infection status of HIV and STDs among this group.

Conclusion

Our findings provide further evidence that married migrant women have lower levels of social support which may be related to some social characteristics and their awareness status of AIDS and STDs infection status and that targeted interventions need to be developed for this population.

Full article at:   http://goo.gl/1P4eK6

By: Wenkang Ma¹, Dianmin Kang², Yapei Song³, Chongyi Wei⁴, Gifty Marley¹ and Wei Ma^1*

¹Department of Epidemiology and Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Shandong University, 44 West Wenhua Road, Jinan 250012, Shandong Province, China

²Institute of AIDS Control and Prevention, Shandong Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Jinan, China

³Nosocomial Infection Control Section, Zhengzhou No.7 People’s Hospital, Zhengzhou, China

⁴Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, The University of Californian, San Francisco School of Medicine, San Francisco, USA

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