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Sexually Transmitted Infections: Perceived Knowledge Versus Actual Knowledge, Heather Ferguson, Richard Topolski, Marc Miller

Journal of the Georgia Public Health Association

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) continue to be a serious problem, with potentially severe consequences. Past research has found that people may not seek out treatment for STIs because they do not know what symptoms to look for (Greenberg et al., 2002). The present study investigated many aspects of STI knowledge, including perceived knowledge and actually knowledge. Moreover, this study added a novel and applied aspect to the assessment of STI knowledge: visual knowledge. Overall, participants performed poorly on the actual STI knowledge, however, those who rated their knowledge as high performed significantly better than those who rated their knowledge as …