Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Jul 26, 2021
Open Peer Review Period: Jul 26, 2021 - Sep 20, 2021
Date Accepted: Dec 6, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Dec 6, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Evaluation 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 China: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial
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 pilot-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 pilot-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 pilot 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. The user's experience of the game was assessed by the Educational Game User Experience Evaluation Scale. SPSS 21.0 was used to analyze the data, and 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. A total of 54.73% of users rated the game as excellent, 31.45% of good, 13.09% of medium, and 0.73% of poor.
Conclusions:
AIDS Fighter · Health Defense could increase the AIDS-related knowledge among young students, but the effect 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)
Citation
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