Correlation Between Voluntary HIV Testing and Public Awareness of HIV Using Google Trends in Japan

Abstract

The aim of this article was to evaluate the correlation between the number of voluntary human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) tests conducted and public awareness according to Internet search volumes from Google Trends. We used bivariate correlations to assess the relationship between the Internet search frequency for each term of HIV and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and the number of HIV tests, by time series and prefecture. We observed positive correlations between search frequencies of the terms HIV and AIDS and the number of HIV tests in both time-series analysis (HIV: r = 0.65, P < .001; AIDS: r = 0.73, P < .001) and analysis by prefecture (HIV: r = 0.71, P < .001; AIDS: r = 0.40, P = .001). The findings of this study indicate that the current stagnant number of HIV tests conducted in Japan reflects declining public awareness regarding HIV.

Keywords

AIDS HIV Internet Japan testing

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