Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Nov 26, 2020
Date Accepted: Jun 5, 2021
Vil Du?!: An Exploratory Mixed-Method Evaluation of a Therapeutic Game for Sexually Abused Children and Adolescents
ABSTRACT
Background:
Talking about experiences of sexual abuse in therapy is difficult for children and adolescents. Possible reasons for this difficulty are a lack of vocabulary to describe the situation or feelings of shame, fear, and self-blame that are associated with the sexual abuse. The serious game Vil Du?! was developed to help children open up about sexual experiences. Vil Du?! is a non-verbal communication game, which resembles a dress-up game, in which children can show the therapist what happened to them.
Objective:
This exploratory evaluation study examined which working elements of the game could be identified in therapy with victims of sexual abuse (aim 1). In addition, this study examined how therapists evaluated the acceptability of the game (aim 2).
Methods:
Therapists completed twenty-three qualitative surveys about the use of Vil Du?!. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 therapists. The data was analyzed in Nvivo following the stepwise guidelines of Zhang and Wildemuth.
Results:
Regarding the first aim, therapists mentioned various working elements of Vil Du?!. For instance, that Vil Du?! puts the child in control of the situation. In addition, Vil Du?! reduces barriers to disclosure because there is no need to talk or have eye-contact with the therapist. Regarding the second aim, Vil Du?! was generally evaluated more positively than negatively by therapists. For instance, therapists indicated that using Vil Du?! is time-efficient and might make the treatment process less confronting and difficult for the client. According to therapists most clients indeed experienced less tension and more positive (or neutral) emotions than negative emotions when using Vil Du?!.
Conclusions:
The most important working elements of Vil Du?! according to therapists are that it enables children to regain control over their sexual abuse experiences and it reduces barriers to disclose sexual abuse experiences. The more positive than negative evaluation of Vil Du?! indicates the acceptability of the game for therapists as well as their clients. Clinical Trial: not applicable
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.