Original articleEfficacy of It's Your Game-Tech: A Computer-Based Sexual Health Education Program for Middle School Youth
Section snippets
Study design and participants
We evaluated IYG-Tech using a randomized, two-arm nested design in a large, urban school district in southeast Texas. We randomized 10 schools to the intervention condition (IYG-Tech) and 10 schools to the control condition (state-approved health education usually from a textbook, without any exposure to a structured health education program). After randomization, one intervention school was dropped because of changes in its administration, which prevented us from conducting timely recruitment.
Sample characteristics
The baseline sample had a mean age of 14.3 years (standard deviation = .59), and was 59% female, 74% Hispanic, 17% African-American, and 9% other race/ethnicity. Close to 20% of students reported ever engaging in any type of sex (vaginal, oral, or anal) at baseline. No significant differences in these characteristics were observed across conditions (Table 1).
Intervention exposure
We created five categories of intervention exposure: completion of no lessons (“no exposure”), 1–4 lessons (“low exposure”), 5–8 lessons
Discussion
In the present study, we evaluated the behavioral and psychosocial effects of IYG-Tech, a completely computer-based HIV, STI, and pregnancy prevention curriculum for middle school students. We found that IYG-Tech did not significantly impact sexual initiation or any other sexual behavior. However, we did find that IYG-Tech significantly impacted several important psychosocial factors (e.g., knowledge about STIs and condoms, beliefs about waiting until marriage to have sex, perceived friends'
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Lionel Santibáñez for his editorial assistance. These findings were presented at the American Public Health Association 142nd Annual Meeting and Exposition.
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Conflicts of Interest: All authors have no potential conflicts of interest, either real or perceived, to disclose.
This trial is registered at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT01280136).