Peer-Led Expert Interviews Sharpen HIV Knowledge and Empathy in Medical Students

A novel classroom experiment in western India has shown that simply watching two of their classmates interview HIV counselors and public health officers can transform how medical students understand the disease and the people it affects. In a study published in Discover Education, a team at Parul University in Vadodara, Gujarat, reports that a structured program of student-led expert interviews produced striking gains in both knowledge and attitudes among 116 third-year medical students, with effect sizes rarely seen in educational research.

The intervention rested on a deceptively simple idea drawn from psychology rather than medicine. Instead of inviting each student to interrogate frontline HIV workers individually, an impossible logistical burden for a class of more than a hundred, the researchers trained two student volunteers to conduct structured interviews with experts while the entire class observed and participated through guided activities. The approach operationalizes Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, in which people acquire knowledge and behaviors by observing models they identify with, and David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle, which links concrete experience to reflection, conceptualization, and active application. Because the interviewers were peers rather than faculty or outside professionals, the researchers theorized that observers would find the models relatable, feel less performance anxiety, and process the exchanges more deeply.

The study was conducted during the 2025-2026 academic year at a private medical college affiliated with a 750-bed tertiary care teaching hospital that runs an Integrated Counselling and Testing Centre and an Anti-Retroviral Therapy facility. Participants were fifth-semester students in the Community Medicine rotation who had already completed basic pathology and microbiology coursework, including introductory HIV content. The cohort was nearly evenly split by gender, with 52.9 percent female and 47.1 percent male students, and a mean age of 21.4 years. The research protocol was approved by the institutional ethics committee and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, with written informed consent obtained from all participants.

The program consisted of two 90-minute sessions held one week apart, each following an identical format. A 15-minute introduction set out the learning objectives and observation guidelines, followed by 60 minutes of structured peer-conducted interviews with built-in reflection pauses, and a final 15-minute facilitated discussion in which observing students could question the experts directly. In the first session, two students interviewed an ICTC counselor with two years of experience on HIV testing and pre- and post-test counseling, and an ART counselor with seven years of experience on treatment adherence and adverse event management. The second session shifted from clinical care to program mechanics, featuring a Cluster Prevention Officer, a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer with 15 years of experience, and a representative from a local Targeted Intervention non-governmental organization who discussed reaching high-risk populations, countering stigma, and pre-exposure prophylaxis.

Critical to the design were the scaffolds that kept observers mentally active rather than passively present. Preparation materials containing background readings and suggested questions were distributed a week in advance, students met beforehand to draft questions for the experts, structured note-taking templates focused attention during the interviews, and designated reflection periods allowed the class to consolidate what they heard. Seating and a microphone system ensured clear sightlines and audibility for everyone in the room. These elements matter because observational learning only works when the environment supports attention, retention, and mental rehearsal, a point long emphasized in the instructional design literature.

Measurement was unusually rigorous for a classroom intervention. The knowledge instrument was a 13-item multiple-choice questionnaire covering HIV transmission, clinical management, the structure and phases of India’s National AIDS Control Program, targeted interventions, and treatment principles. A panel comprising an experienced HIV clinician, a public health specialist, and a medical education researcher validated the items, yielding a content validity index of 0.92, well above the recommended threshold of 0.80, and Cronbach’s alpha of 0.78, indicating acceptable internal consistency. Attitudes toward people living with HIV and toward the professional role in reducing stigma were captured with five psychometrically tested Likert-scale items addressing stigma reduction, social determinants, ethical considerations, and health equity.

The quantitative results were remarkable. Mean knowledge scores rose from 9.53 to 12.00 out of 13, a Cohen’s d of 1.72, which by conventional standards qualifies as a very large effect. Attitude scores climbed from 4.29 to 4.81 on a five-point scale, an even larger effect of d = 1.93, with both paired comparisons statistically significant at p < 0.001. Notably, the largest knowledge gains appeared in programmatic domains that textbooks rarely cover in operational depth: understanding of District AIDS Prevention and Control Units improved by 47.1 percent, and comprehension of bridge populations rose by 47.0 percent. The comparatively smaller gains in clinical content likely reflect a ceiling effect, since students arrived with solid baseline knowledge from prior coursework.

Exploratory qualitative responses, analyzed through inductive thematic analysis with dual independent coding and substantial inter-rater agreement of Cohen’s kappa = 0.82, revealed three dominant themes. In 89 percent of responses, students described enhanced practical understanding of how HIV services actually function, with one remarking that the sessions changed their view of challenges never covered in textbooks. Some 76 percent reported increased empathy and reduced stigma, one student reflecting that hearing about real struggles with discrimination made them grasp how much a future doctor’s attitude matters. Another 68 percent expressed new appreciation for the sheer complexity of implementing a national AIDS control program, particularly the difficulty of reaching high-risk populations while maintaining quality across settings. The authors are careful to note that these self-reported perceptions contextualize, but cannot causally explain, the quantitative improvements, and that social desirability bias cannot be excluded.

Why might watching a peer interview a counselor outperform conventional lectures? The researchers point to the identification effect: observers learn most powerfully from models perceived as similar in competence and stage of learning, and a fellow student fits that description better than a professor. Peer-mediated formats may also lower defensive reactions, which is especially consequential when the subject is stigma and discrimination, topics that can provoke discomfort and resistance in a lecture hall. Meanwhile, the expert interviewers preserved the authenticity and fidelity of frontline knowledge, including candid narratives about patients’ lived experiences. The authors suggest that these indirect narratives appeared to evoke empathy-building effects similar to those documented for direct intergroup contact, even though students never met people living with HIV themselves.

The study has clear limitations that the authors acknowledge candidly. It lacked a control group, was conducted at a single institution with a homogeneous student population, measured attitudes by self-report, and assessed outcomes only immediately after the intervention, leaving long-term retention and behavioral change unknown. Still, the magnitude of the effects, the validated instruments, and the systematic qualitative procedures give the findings unusual weight for an educational study. The team calls for randomized controlled trials against alternative teaching methods, structured qualitative work to unpack the mechanisms of vicarious learning, longitudinal follow-up, and replication across other institutions and stigmatized health topics. If those follow-ups hold up, the message for medical educators is compelling: when it comes to socially complex subjects like HIV, letting students take the microphone may teach the whole class more than any lecture, and at a fraction of the logistical cost of one-on-one exposure.

Subject of Research: Peer-led expert interviews as vicarious experiential learning to improve HIV/AIDS knowledge and attitudes among Indian medical students

Article Title: Student led expert interviews improve knowledge and attitudes toward HIV and AIDS among medical students

Article References: Parmar, S., Das, L., Shah, U., Patel, G. M., Bharadva, N. A., & Dave, P. (2026). Student led expert interviews improve knowledge and attitudes toward HIV and AIDS among medical students. Discover Education, 5(1), Article 1167. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02053-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02053-0

Keywords: HIV/AIDS, medical education, vicarious learning, experiential learning, student-led interviews, peer learning, National AIDS Control Program, stigma, Community Medicine, Bandura social learning theory, attitude change, India