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A game-based intervention to support adolescents’ sexual health and adulthood preparation skills: Protocol for a multi-site randomized controlled trial evaluation
ABSTRACT
Background:
To continue building the evidence base for adolescent pregnancy prevention education, the federal government announced a funding cycle aimed at testing innovative programs for underserved youth. As one of the 12 grantees, we will evaluate Using the Connect (UTC), a novel game-based learning intervention offering youth opportunities to develop sexual health knowledge and skills in adulthood preparation subjects.
Objective:
Our article describes the clustered randomized controlled trial evaluation protocol to determine UTC’s effectiveness to improve participants’ intention to delay sex, individual-level skills (communication, decision-making, and accessing information), and perception of connection to a trusted adult.
Methods:
This study is a multi-site trial (N=46 sites; N=1,150 participants). Randomization, UTC (treatment) vs. business-as-usual (control), will occur at the site level, where youth aged 10-14 years old will be recruited. Study tasks include participating in the treatment or control program, and completing the baseline, immediate post, 3-month follow-up, and 9-month follow-up surveys. We will use the Engagement, Verification, Maintenance and Confirmation retention model. Primary outcomes include youth’s intention to delay sex, communication skills, decision-making skills, and skills related to accessing sexual health information and resources, and perception of connection to trusted adults. We will assess a variety of possible confounders, and a sensitivity analysis will be conducted to determine the robustness of study findings.
Results:
As of November 2025, participant recruitment is complete, and long- term follow-up data collection is in progress. Data collection is expected to be completed in April 2026.
Conclusions:
This project will evaluate a novel, game-based program to address priorities for the adolescent pregnancy prevention field by implementing and testing programming for underserved youth. Clinical Trial: This trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05927194) on June 6, 2023.
Citation
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Copyright
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