Stigma towards leprosy among medical students

Stigma towards leprosy is usually generated not only from the unpleasant appearance of the patients, but also people’s false perceptions and insufficient knowledge concerning leprosy. The purpose of this study was to analyze the relationship between knowledge and stigmarelated attitudes, affect and behavioral intentions towards leprosy patients among medical students. A cross-sectional study was performed by distributing questionnaires consecutively to 77 medical students in a Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) 2005 of Faculty of Medicine University of Indonesia in April 2009. We assigned their gender, age, knowledge, along with sources and score of their knowledge. Then, we analyzed the relationship between knowledge and attitudes, affect and behavioral intentions towards leprosy patients. The questionnaire assessing knowledge was made by authors and experts after validity assessment (minimum alpha reliability = 0.514 and reliability coefficient = 0.845), while the questionnaire for stigmarelated attitudes, affect and behavioral intentions was adapted and translated to Bahasa from Attribution Questionnaire-Short Form (AQ-SF) after validity checking with Cronbach’s alpha; the minimum was 0.514 and the reliability coefficient 0.897. The subject consisted of 36 male and 41 female students whose age was varied from 18 to 23 years old with the most common source of knowledge concerning leprosy was school. Correlation analysis showed weak negative correlation (r = -0.267 and p = 0.019) between knowledge and AQ-SF score. The higher the knowledge, the lower the AQ-SF score, meant that stigma-related attitudes, affect, and behavioral intentions were better.