Abstract
Among the many effective prevention strategies, frequent HIV testing continues to be promoted to reduce the risk of HIV transmission among sexual minority men (SMM). Testing negative for HIV can result in varied reactions that influence subsequent HIV transmission behaviors, yet the extant research has primarily been conducted in English. The current study examined measurement invariance of a Spanish-translated Inventory of Reactions to Testing HIV Negative (IRTHN). The study also examined whether the IRTHN was associated with subsequent condomless anal sex. Data were drawn from 2,170 Latinx SMM subsample of the UNITE Cohort Study. We conducted a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis to test for measurement invariance between participants who opted to take the survey in English (n = 2,024) and those who opted to take it in Spanish (n = 128). We also examined if the IRTHN is associated with subsequent CAS. The results were suggestive of partial invariance. The subscales of Luck and Invulernability were associated with CAS at the 12-month follow-up. Practice and research-based implications are discussed.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of all our participants in the UNITE study. We thank all the staff, students, and interns who made this study possible. We especially thank Dr. Ali J. Talan, Nicola F. Tavella, Dr. K. Marie Sizemore, and S. Scott Jones for contributing to the parent study. We are grateful for the time and contributions of Dr. Mark Pandori and the Alameda County Public Health Laboratory. We would also like to thank our collaborator, Dr. Brian Mustanski. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Institutes of Health, particularly our Project Scientists, Drs. Gerald Sharp, Sonia Lee, and Michael Stirratt.
Funding
This study was funded by a joint award from the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute on Mental Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute on Child Health and Human Development, and National Institute on Drug Abuse (UG3-AI133674, P.I.: Rendina). Gabriel Robles was supported by a Research Supplement to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (3UH3AI133674-04S1). Jane J. Lee was supported by the National Center For Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under award number KL2TR002317. Addam Reynolds was supported by the National Institute of Aging under the award number 5T32AG000037-44.
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The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Data collection for this study was approved by the Integrated Institutional Review Board of the City Universisty of New York. Affiliations reflect authors’ institutions at the time of manuscript submission, which were not directly involved in the human subjects’ portion of the research. The current data analyses were conducted under the auspices of the IRB review committee at Rutgers University.
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Robles, G., Lee, J.J., Reynolds, A. et al. Reactions to Testing HIV Negative: An Assessment of Measurement Invariance and Associations with Condomless Anal Sex among English and Spanish-speaking Latinx Sexual Minority Men in the United States. AIDS Behav 27, 3661–3668 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-023-04081-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-023-04081-5