To raise the level of AIDS awareness among dental hygienist students, effective teaching methods should be established at training schools, because of the limitations of conventional teaching methods that focus on knowledge acquisition. HIV/AIDS awareness was analyzed in 296 dental hygienist students, with a view to find effective means of increasing their awareness. Our principal component analysis found that HIV/AIDS awareness consists of five principal components extracted from general awareness: (a) degree of acceptance, (b) sense of distance, (c) self-defense, (d) lack of sense of emergency concerning infection, and (e) fear of infection in daily life; and three principal components extracted from the awareness of dentistry: (a) degree of acceptance, (b) fear of infection in clinical practice, and (c) ethics as a dental hygienist. Comparing the principal components of the six distinct groups, we could assume that there is a connection between the degree of acceptance of HIV/AIDS on one hand, and AIDS education and clinical experience on the other. Furthermore, in analyzing the relationship between awareness and knowledge, it is presumed that there is a connection between the degree of acceptance in daily life and clinical practice, and knowledge about infection. This results would suggest that knowledge about infection has priority over other types of knowledge in order to raise the level of HIV/AIDS awareness.
