It’s Your Game-Tech: Toward Sexual Health in the Digital Age

摘要: Adolescent sexually transmitted infection (STI) and birth rates indicate a need for effective middle school HIV/STI, pregnancy prevention curricula to delay, or mitigate consequences of, early sexual activity. Individual and organizational barriers adoption, implementation, maintenance, however, can hamper dissemination of evidence-based health curricula, adversely impacting fidelity reach. Internet-based approaches may help these barriers. This paper describes the development feasibility testing It’s Your Game (IYG)-Tech, a stand-alone 13-lesson life-skills curriculum adapted from an existing effective curriculum—It’s Your Game… Keep it Real (IYG). IYG-Tech adaptation steps were to: 1) Select suitable program gather original program materials; 2) Develop “proof concept” lessons test usability impact; 3) design document describing core content, scope, and methods strategies; 4) produce new program. Lab- school-based tests with students demonstrated high ratings on usability parameters immediate impact selected psychosocial factors related to sexual behavior—perceptions friends’ beliefs, reasons for not having sex, condom use self-efficacy, abstinence intentions, negotiating others to protect personal rules, improved knowledge about what constitutes healthy relationships (all p  is favorably compared to other learning channels (>76.2% agreement) rated as helpful in making healthy choices, selecting detecting challenges those protecting rules through negotiation and refusal skills (89.5% - 100%). Further efficacy indicated as potential strategy to deliver youth.