In Simple Words
An online education platform acts like a standardized digital workbook paired with a remote guide. Instead of relying on local classroom teachers who might feel awkward explaining sensitive topics, adolescents log into interactive web modules in a school computer lab, receiving uniform, non-judgmental information and private digital counseling.
Ninth-grade pupils in Colombian public schools
- Usual sexual education
- Group used for comparison
- Online Profamilia course
- Knowledge 0.38 standard deviations higher
Six months after the course. Whole course effect in 21 cities; scaling, remote tutoring and hardware were not separately tested.
See source →Research question
Traditional face-to-face adolescent sexual education in developing nations struggles with high scale-up costs, quality loss across regions, and teacher discomfort when discussing sensitive reproductive topics. These barriers contribute to elevated rates of sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancies in resource-constrained settings.
Participants
N = 4,599 human ninth-grade students (average age 15) across 138 classrooms in 69 urban public secondary schools in 21 Colombian cities.
Study Design
Classroom-level Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) evaluated across 11 weeks of course delivery, with follow-up surveys administered at 1 week and 6 months post-intervention.
Results
Generated a 0.38 standard deviation improvement in overall sexual knowledge (p < 0.01) and a 0.17 standard deviation improvement in sexual attitudes (p < 0.01) six months post-course.
Takeaway
Implement mandatory, interactive web-based health modules monitored by remote counselors within existing school computer labs to standardize instruction and bypass instructor reluctance.
Source and citation
See source →Read alongside the research
Plain-English glossary
Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.
- Follow-up
Collecting more information about participants later in a study to see what has happened to them. The term can also mean the length of time researchers keep track of them.
ExampleResearchers interview the same workers three months after a programme ends. That later interview is a follow-up.
GET-IT glossary · Follow-up ↗Read more about follow-up →- Randomized controlled trial
A study that uses chance, like drawing lots, to decide who receives each option being compared. Researchers compare the groups’ outcomes to estimate the effect of those options.
ExampleA lottery assigns volunteers to a training programme or a comparison group. Researchers then compare their outcomes.
GET-IT glossary · Randomized study ↗Read more about randomized controlled trial →