Background:

The Theory of Social Representation (TSR) is a widely used approach to understanding attitudes towards HIV/AIDS in diverse cultures and contexts. However, there are few studies that offer a articulate view of the problem, and that also focus on the role of future educators. This research aimed to understand the extent to which knowledge and social representations about HIV/AIDS determine attitudes towards HIV/AIDS in a population of educators in training.

Methods:

This research is based on the contribution of 613 university students from Huelva, Spain. For that, TRS has been used and the hypothesis has been formulated according to its assumptions. A test about HIV, representation scales and attitude scales towards HIV are the instruments that have used for data collection. These help to obtain information about some social representations and exclusive attitudes. As an analythical method, the reproduction of structural equations was into use.

Results:

The data have proved that the knowledge degree about HIV has a negative (β=-0,36) influence on negative representations. And these have a positive effect (β=0,80) on exclusive attitudes. Similarly, the knowledge degree determined both in an indirect and negative (β=-0,26) way the discriminatory attitudes.

Conclusions:

The results show that student teachers`attitudes, whether discriminatory or tolerant towards people with HIV/AIDS, are determined by their social representations, and these by the level of knowledge about HIV/AIDS, highlighting the importance of education.

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