It is a study which compares white and African descending teenagers on HIV/Aids vulnerability. The sample is not fortuitous, the participants had been 715 students of the nocturnal public education of school of periphery of Santa Catarina. The used instrument was a questionnaire auto-managed with closed questions. Five dimensions were analyzed: sexual and affective, knowledge on Aids, attitude, risk and risk perception and protection behavior. It was verified that 73,8% of teenagers had already had sexual relations and that a steady relationship is a complicating factor for safe sex practice. White students have obtained a mean of 6,42 scores on the Aids knowledge sub-test against 6,22 from African descending ones. Both groups presented favorable attitudes towards condom use, but girls had more favorable attitudes than boys. White students considered themselves to be more informed about HIV/Aids than did African descendents. HIV/Aids vulnerability presented itself to be associated to teenagers' unfavorable sociocultural situation and not to ethnic factors.
Aids; Attitudes; Teenagers; Ethnic groups; Human immunodeficiency virus
