Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: May 20, 2024
Date Accepted: Nov 19, 2024
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited.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.
Evaluating the efficacy of “MIApp”:A serious game to deliver health education to adolescents about meningococcal disease.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Meningococcal disease (MD) is a severe, vaccine-preventable infectious disease that can be life-threatening. This study evaluated the efficacy of the Meningococcal Infection Awareness, Prevention and Protection app (MIApp), a serious game to deliver health education for adolescents about MD.
Objective:
This study evaluated the efficacy of the Meningococcal Infection Awareness, Prevention and Protection app (MIApp), a novel serious game to deliver health education for adolescents about MD.
Methods:
Participating high school students (Years 7-10) from six secondary schools across metropolitan Western Australia completed a pre- and post-intervention questionnaire to measure primary outcomes. The findings were compared to changes in an active control (comparison) group that received an in-class educational presentation about MD transmission and protection.
Results:
Of the 788 participating high school students, the median post-intervention correct score in both the MIApp and control cohorts was 14/16 (87.5% correct responses), compared to the median pre-intervention correct score of 6/16 (37.5% correct responses), representing a significant (p<0.01) increase in MD knowledge. Improvements were retained in both groups three months after the initial intervention, demonstrating the efficacy of MIApp to deliver health education about MD transmission and protection.
Conclusions:
Participating adolescents considered this digital game more enjoyable than a presentation. Serious games represent a constructive tool to help teachers impart knowledge about risk-avoidance behaviours, vaccination uptake, and early symptom identification of MD.
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Copyright
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