ASIAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY INSTITUTIONS IN NYC AND HIV

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed study aims to assess the role of community institutions in encouraging or impeding HIV prevention activities within Asian immigrant communities in New York City (NYC). Community institutions in Asian immigrant communities play a key role in promoting or challenging community social norms, which facilitate or impede HIV prevention interventions by guiding community members' social understanding of HIV and shaping social practices and organizational policies and procedures. Community social norms also shape individuals' perception of risk and their willingness to engage in protective behaviors. The specific aims of the study are: 1) To investigate the relationship between community social and economic structures, community institutions, and prevailing social norms in immigrant communities; 2) To determine how the policies and practices of community institutions create, transmit, enforce and challenge prevailing community social norms; 3) To assess how participation in social networks that form within and around community institutions influence individuals' interpretation, transmission, reinforcement, and challenging of social norms related to HIV risk prevention and behavior; and 4) To determine how individuals' adoption of community institution and network norms promote or deter HIV prevention efforts at the individual, organizational, and community levels. In Phase 1, using data from key-informant interviews and ethnic directories of services and organizations, community organizations in the Chinese, Asian Indian, and Korean communities in NYC will be catalogued, typed and mapped to provide an understanding of the overall system of community institutions and a suitable sampling frame. In Phase 2, thirty community institutions will be chosen from the institutions identified in Phase 1 for in-depth study through semi-structured interviews, field observation, and content analysis of annual reports, newsletters, sermons, etc.). Community profiles for each of the three ethnic communities will also be developed using secondary data sources. In Phase 3, data will be analyzed to construct explanatory models of the relationships described above and a typology of community institutions and their potential role in HIV prevention, how they should be approached, and strategies of motivating them to take on an expanded role in HIV prevention. A "grounded theory" approach will be used to analyze the data.