Table 2.

Youths’ intervention-relevant trust concerns

Personal trust (axiological/moral (dis)trust)
Caring	‘…if they cared they wouldn't have gotten it in the first place by having unprotected sex…’
Vengefulness	‘…there was going around a picture of a guy in (city name) passing around AIDS… I passed it on to everybody, because, he don't care…’
Dishonesty	‘If they do have disease, they're not really gonna tell you.’
Infidelity	‘…you can be with one person and they can do… other stuff… so having sex period… is putting yourself at risk.’
Irresponsibility	‘People are not being responsible here.… Everybody know everybody, everybody done did everybody.’
Group trust (network closure/accountability)
Family instability	‘A lot of people don't care (for themselves) because they ain't got nobody to care for them.’
Community disinvestment	‘…everything leaving (city name)… it's not safe any more… like it can be with the STDs, it can be with the crime… we just don't care.’
Institutional trust (benevolence)
Government	‘The Center of Disease Control, they know that African Americans are dying out… from HIV and AIDS. What are they doing about it?... sex education in seventh grade. It's like they want us to die out.’
Healthcare providers	‘P1: And I think some doctors just become doctors to be nasty. P2: And to get money. Some just, like I said, doctors get a paycheck. They don't really care…’ ‘…the (school) nurses… since they are ‘certified’ they cannot talk about you…’
Teachers	‘…teachers… know you, judge you, and they like to talk about you.’
Churches	‘…you don't talk about (sexuality) because it's supposedly bad… (with) that kind of an attitude… questions are shoved under the carpet.’
CBO	‘(Name of CBO)… they answer your questions, they're up front…’
Technological trust
Information technologies (privacy and safety)
Social costs of HIV/STI-related information seeking	‘…if we are embarrassed or it's too personal, we can… use the internet and not have to talk to people about it.’
Technology-facilitated privacy breaches	‘…the messages may be shown to other people… people may change your original text message…’
Negative gossip	‘When we do speak upon it, it's more of just gossip… what such and such done her.’
Fighting	‘…they're talking about who's sleeping with whose man. (The internet is) trouble.’
Prevention technologies (instrumental (dis)trust)
Reliability of condoms	‘…no matter who it is… make sure you use a condom…’‘ The last time I learned about HIV and STDs is the…seventh grade… I learned that even though you use a condom, you can still get it.’
Accuracy of HIV tests	‘… before we get intimate or get serious, we should both go get checked together.’‘ …maybe you don't have it this time, maybe… it's sitting there in your body not coming out ‘til five years later. You turn thirty, how I got this? “I don't know.”’
Trust in information (secondary targets of trust)
Credentials of experts	‘…you never know by touching hands, I know that you can't… but… I still don't want to touch it cause you, they might come up with a new invention, and it might come out in the air and you can get it…’
Reputation and rumor	‘They said most of the people in the (apartment complex) had it and trying to pass it down… a lot of people messing with the same person.’ ‘They be lying sometimes. They steal somebody's phone and just take a picture. And be like, “she got this. They got this. Don't mess with them”… they be mad at them.’

CBO, community-based organization; STD, sexually transmitted disease; STI, sexually transmitted infection.