title: It's Your Game-Tech: Toward Sexual Health in the Digital Age.
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 ofIt'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 (allp< .05). Youth ratedIYG-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 forIYG-Tech as a potential strategy to deliver effective HIV/STI, and pregnancy prevention to middle school youth.
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Promotion & Prevention Research, The University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Ross
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Shegog
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Promotion & Prevention Research, The University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Melissa F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Peskin
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Promotion & Prevention Research, The University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Markham
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Promotion & Prevention Research, The University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Melanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Thiel
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Promotion & Prevention Research, The University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Efrat
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Karny
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Promotion & Prevention Research, The University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Robert C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Addy
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Promotion & Prevention Research, The University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Kimberly A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.affiliation: Center for Health Promotion & Prevention Research, The University of Texas School of Public Health, Houston, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Tortolero
keywords: Adolescents; Computer-Based Health Education; Health Communications; School-Based Health; Sexual Health; Web-Based Health Education