JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The AIDS epidemic among young students is serious, and effective preventive interventions are urgently needed. Game-based intervention has become an innovative way to change healthy behaviors, and we have developed an AIDS educational game called AIDS Fighter · Health Defense. In this study we tested the effect of an AIDS Fighter · Health Defense for young students to improve AIDS-related knowledge, stigma and attitude of high-risk behaviors in Southwest China.

Objective:

To test the effect of an AIDS educational game (AIDS Fighter · Health Defense) for young students to improve AIDS-related knowledge, stigma and attitude of high-risk behaviors in Southwest China.

Methods:

A randomized controlled trial was conducted from September 14 to September 27, 2020. Ninety-six students from two classes in a middle school were selected by stratified cluster sampling in Luzhou City, China. The two classes were randomly divided into the intervention group (n=50) and the control group (n=46). The intervention group received AIDS educational game (AIDS Fighter · Health Defense); the control group learned AIDS-related knowledge through independent learning on the QQ chat group. The AIDS-related knowledge questionnaire, the stigma scale, the attitude questionnaire on AIDS-related high-risk behaviors were used to measure the effect of an AIDS educational game by face-to-face. The user's experience of the game was assessed by the Educational Game User Experience Evaluation Scale. The difference was statistically significant with P≤0.05.

Results:

After the intervention, the AIDS knowledge awareness rate (X ̅±S, ％) of the intervention group and the control group were 70.09±11.58 and 57.49±16.58（t=4.282, P<0.001）. The stigma scores of the two groups were 2.44±0.57 and 2.48±0.47（t=0.354, P =0.724）, The positive rate (X ̅±S, ％) of attitudes of high-risk AIDS behaviors of the two groups were 82.00±23.44 and 79.62±17.94（t=0.555, P =0.580. The mean percentage of the game evaluation as excellent was 54.73%, and 31.45% of good, 13.09% of medium, 0.73% of poor.

Conclusions:

AIDS Fighter · Health Defense could increase the AIDS-related knowledge among young students, but the effect of the game in reducing AIDS-related stigma and improving the attitudes of high-risk AIDS behaviors has not appeared. Long-term effects and large-scale studies are needed to assess the efficacy of game-based intervention. Clinical Trial: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR2000038230)