Heterosexual attitudes to homosexuality : homophobia at a rural Australian university

M. Hopwood, J. Connors

This study compared attitudes towards homosexuality of 164 students from two faculties at a rural Australian university. Eighty-two percent of participants were aged from 18-24 years, 65% percent of the sample were female with 58% of participants enrolled in a humanities course and 42% in a business course. A cross-sectional design using the Heterosexual Attitudes to Homosexuals (H.A.T.H.) and Fear of HIV/AIDS questionnaires found that for the total sample the major predictors of homophobia were fear of HIV/AIDS, gender, religiosity, and academic major. Business majors were significantly more homophobic than humanities majors. The findings imply that homophobia may be prevalent among university faculties and that staff and student programs need to be implemented to address homophobia, especially among business majors and lecturers.[Copies are available from: Haworth Document Delivery Center. The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA]