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Knowledge about HIV prevention in young people

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HIV/AIDS
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What you should know about this indicator

The ongoing spread of HIV is largely driven by sexual transmission among young people. Comprehensive knowledge about HIV and AIDS is essential for adopting behaviors that reduce the risk of transmission.

How is this data described by its producer?

This indicator measures the percentage of respondents that answered "YES" to all the responses below:

  1. Can the risk of HIV transmission be reduced by having sex with only one uninfected partner who has no other partners?
  2. Can a person reduce the risk of getting HIV by using a condom every time they have sex?
  3. Can a healthy-looking person have HIV?
  4. Can a person get HIV from mosquito bites?
  5. Can a person get HIV by sharing food with someone who is infected?

The first three questions should not be altered. Questions 4 and 5 ask about local misconceptions and may be replaced by the most common misconceptions in your country. Examples include: “Can a person get HIV by hugging or shaking hands with a person who is infected?” and “Can a person get HIV through supernatural means?”

Those who have never heard of HIV and AIDS should be excluded from the numerator but included in the denominator. An answer of “don't know” should be recorded as an incorrect answer.

Scores for each of the individual questions (based on the same denominator) are required as well as the score for the composite indicator.

Knowledge about HIV prevention in young people
Percentage of young people aged 15-24 who correctly identify both methods of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV and reject major misconceptions about HIV transmission.
Source
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
December 15, 2025
Date range
2000–2024
Unit
%

Related research and writing

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says HIV/AIDS by Our World in Data

HIV / AIDS

Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie

What you should know about this indicator

The ongoing spread of HIV is largely driven by sexual transmission among young people. Comprehensive knowledge about HIV and AIDS is essential for adopting behaviors that reduce the risk of transmission.

How is this data described by its producer?

This indicator measures the percentage of respondents that answered "YES" to all the responses below:

  1. Can the risk of HIV transmission be reduced by having sex with only one uninfected partner who has no other partners?
  2. Can a person reduce the risk of getting HIV by using a condom every time they have sex?
  3. Can a healthy-looking person have HIV?
  4. Can a person get HIV from mosquito bites?
  5. Can a person get HIV by sharing food with someone who is infected?

The first three questions should not be altered. Questions 4 and 5 ask about local misconceptions and may be replaced by the most common misconceptions in your country. Examples include: “Can a person get HIV by hugging or shaking hands with a person who is infected?” and “Can a person get HIV through supernatural means?”

Those who have never heard of HIV and AIDS should be excluded from the numerator but included in the denominator. An answer of “don't know” should be recorded as an incorrect answer.

Scores for each of the individual questions (based on the same denominator) are required as well as the score for the composite indicator.

Knowledge about HIV prevention in young people
Percentage of young people aged 15-24 who correctly identify both methods of preventing the sexual transmission of HIV and reject major misconceptions about HIV transmission.
Source
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
December 15, 2025
Date range
2000–2024
Unit
%

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS – Global AIDS Update, Global Aids Monitoring

GAM is a standardized reporting framework coordinated by UNAIDS in which countries report HIV-related data every year. The data are used to assess progress toward global targets (currently the 95–95–95 targets and post-2025 goals).

The indicators and questions in this document are designed for use by national AIDS programmes and partners to assess the state of a country's HIV and AIDS response, and to measure progress towards achieving national HIV targets. Countries are encouraged to integrate these indicators and questions into their ongoing monitoring efforts and to report comprehensive national data through the Global AIDS Monitoring (GAM) process. In this way they will contribute to improving understanding of the global response to the HIV epidemic, including progress that has been made towards achieving the commitments and global targets set out in the new United Nations Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS: Ending Inequalities and Getting on Track to End AIDS by 2030, adopted in June 2021, and the linked Sustainable Development Goals.

Retrieved on
December 15, 2025
Retrieved from
https://aidsinfo.unaids.org/dataset
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
AIDS, crisis and the power to transform: UNAIDS Global AIDS Update 2025. Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS; 2025. Full report: https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/documents/2025/2025-global-aids-update-summary

GAM is a standardized reporting framework coordinated by UNAIDS in which countries report HIV-related data every year. The data are used to assess progress toward global targets (currently the 95–95–95 targets and post-2025 goals).

The indicators and questions in this document are designed for use by national AIDS programmes and partners to assess the state of a country's HIV and AIDS response, and to measure progress towards achieving national HIV targets. Countries are encouraged to integrate these indicators and questions into their ongoing monitoring efforts and to report comprehensive national data through the Global AIDS Monitoring (GAM) process. In this way they will contribute to improving understanding of the global response to the HIV epidemic, including progress that has been made towards achieving the commitments and global targets set out in the new United Nations Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS: Ending Inequalities and Getting on Track to End AIDS by 2030, adopted in June 2021, and the linked Sustainable Development Goals.

Retrieved on
December 15, 2025
Retrieved from
https://aidsinfo.unaids.org/dataset
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
AIDS, crisis and the power to transform: UNAIDS Global AIDS Update 2025. Geneva: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS; 2025. Full report: https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/documents/2025/2025-global-aids-update-summary

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Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Knowledge about HIV prevention in young people”, part of the following publication: Max Roser and Hannah Ritchie (2023) - “HIV / AIDS”. Data adapted from Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20251217-023707/grapher/young-people-with-knowledge-on-hiv-prevention.html [online resource] (archived on December 17, 2025).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Knowledge about HIV prevention in young people” [dataset]. Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, “Global AIDS Update, Global Aids Monitoring” [original data]. Retrieved December 26, 2025 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20251217-023707/grapher/young-people-with-knowledge-on-hiv-prevention.html (archived on December 17, 2025).