Scalable Internet-Based Sexual Health Curriculum
RCTClinical Trial
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.
Picture this
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.
What the evidence says
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.
- Who was studied
- N = 4,599 human ninth-grade students (average age 15) across 138 classrooms in 69 urban public secondary schools in 21 Colombian cities.
- How
- 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.
What to do
Implement mandatory, interactive web-based health modules monitored by remote counselors within existing school computer labs to standardize instruction and bypass instructor reluctance.
From the source
"Information and communication technologies (ICTs) for sexual education hence hold promise to improve school-based sexual education along three dimensions: reducing loss of effectiveness when scaling up, reducing costs of implementation, and overcoming educator reluctance to present sexual education material."
Do Information Technologies Improve Teenagers’ Sexual Education? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Colombia