TITLE:
It’s Your Game-Tech: Toward Sexual Health in the Digital Age
AUTHORS:
Ross Shegog, Melissa F. Peskin, Christine Markham, Melanie Thiel, Efrat Karny, Robert C. Addy, Kimberly A. Johnson, Susan Tortolero
KEYWORDS:
Adolescents, Web-Based Health Education, Computer-Based Health Education, Health
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.5 No.15,
August
28,
2014
ABSTRACT: Adolescent
sexually transmitted infection (STI) and birth rates indicate a need for
effective middle school HIV/STI, and pregnancy prevention curricula to delay,
or mitigate consequences of, early sexual activity. Individual and
organizational barriers to adoption, implementation, and maintenance, however,
can hamper dissemination of evidence-based sexual health curricula, adversely
impacting fidelity and reach. Internet-based approaches may help mitigate these
barriers. This paper describes the development and feasibility testing of It’s
Your Game (IYG)-Tech, a
stand-alone 13-lesson Internet-based sexual health life-skills curriculum
adapted from an existing effective sexual health curriculum—It’s Your
Game… Keep it Real (IYG). IYG-Tech development adaptation steps
were to: 1) Select a suitable effective program and gather the original program
materials; 2) Develop “proof of concept” lessons and test usability and impact;
3) Develop the program design document describing the core content, scope, and
methods and strategies; and 4) produce the new program. Lab- and school-based
tests with middle school students demonstrated high ratings on usability
parameters and immediate impact on selected psychosocial factors related to
sexual behavior—perceptions of friends’ beliefs, reasons for not having sex,
condom use self-efficacy, abstinence intentions, negotiating with others to
protect personal rules, and improved knowledge about what constitutes healthy
relationships (all p IYG-Tech is favorably compared
to other learning channels (>76.2% agreement) and rated the lessons as
helpful in making healthy choices, selecting personal rules, detecting
challenges to those rules, and protecting personal rules through negotiation
and refusal skills (89.5% - 100%). Further efficacy testing is indicated for IYG-Tech as a potential strategy to
deliver effective HIV/STI, and pregnancy prevention to middle school youth.