Gamifying Sexual Education for Adolescents in a Low-Tech Setting: Quasi-Experimental Design Study

Autor: Hussein Haruna, Kingsley Okoye, Zamzami Zainuddin, Xiao Hu, Samuel Chu, Samira Hosseini
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: JMIR Serious Games, Vol 9, Iss 4, p e19614 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2291-9279
DOI: 10.2196/19614
Popis: BackgroundSexual education has become increasingly important as unhealthy sexual practices and subsequent health risks become more prevalent during adolescence. Traditional sex education teaching methodologies are limiting for digital natives exposed to various digital technologies. Harnessing the power of technology applications attractive to the younger generation may be a useful approach for teaching sex education. ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to improve sexual health knowledge and understanding of the problems associated with unhealthy sexual practices and address sexual and reproductive health challenges experienced in a low-tech setting. MethodsA participatory design approach was used to develop the digital gamified methodology. A sample of 120 secondary school students aged 11-15 were randomly assigned to either experimental or control group for each of the 3 teaching approaches: (1) gamified instruction (actual serious games [SG] in teaching); (2) gamification (GM; making nongames, such as game-like learning); and (3) traditional teaching (TT) methods. ResultsThe SG and GM approaches were more effective than TT methods in teaching sexual health education. Specifically, the average scores across groups demonstrated an increase of mean scores from the pre- to posttest (25.10 [SD 5.50] versus 75.86 [SD 13.16]; t119=41.252; P
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