Acceptability of a Comprehensive Sex Education Self-Study Website for Teaching Reproductive Health: A Pilot Study Among College Students and Obstetrics and Gynecology Resident Physicians

Abstract

Introduction: There is a growing interest among adolescents to obtain sexual health information online, which could be helpful in rural areas where adolescents face unique obstacles to contraception access, and medically accurate sex education is not mandated. Aim: This study piloted a comprehensive sex education self-study website among undergraduate students and resident physicians to assess the accuracy and feasibility for future use in younger adolescents. Methods: A sex education website developed by a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist (OBGYN) was piloted among a group of OBGYN resident physicians and undergraduates from West Virginia. Groups were chosen to assess the accuracy of information and acceptability for use in younger adolescents. The 30-minute curriculum was a series of short videos (2e4 minutes each) covering anatomy, physiology, sexuality, gender identity, relationship health, contraception, and sexually transmitted infection prevention. Data were obtained on subjects' past experience and perception of sex education. Subjects also evaluated the website for usefulness and accuracy. Outcomes: Main outcomes included a Likert scale assessment of each curriculum session's usefulness, accuracy, and how easy it was to follow. Results: 24 subjects (14 undergraduates and 10 physicians) participated during September and October of 2019. All except for 1 subject had sex education taught in school; 11 (45.8%) reported it to be "low quality"; 23 (95.8%) reported being taught in a classroom. Individual website video sessions were reported to be highly accurate, very easy to follow, and very useful. All subjects (100%) felt that high school adolescents would be interested in the self-study website. Conclusions: A self-study website was successfully tested and found to be a well-accepted way to teach sex education among this pilot group. Future work involves testing this tool among younger adolescent subjects.

Improving Pharmacists’ Awareness of Inadequate Antibiotic Use for URTIs through an Educational Intervention: A Pilot Study

“…The results showed that general practitioners considered the course helpful and were satisfied with the content and layout [ 25 ]. Another pilot study with 10 obstetrician–gynecologist resident physicians and 14 undergraduates assessed the usability of a reproductive health self-study website, comprising four online sessions [ 24 ]. The course was evaluated in terms of medical accuracy, ease of use, and overall usefulness, using the Likert scale, and the results unequivocally showed that the online platform is an acceptable way to learn.…”

“…In addition, regarding evaluation, we asked for an individual evaluation for each module, not only in terms of its usability but also completeness, correction, and accuracy. Furthermore, each question of the evaluation questionnaire of the eHealthResp platform (both the online course and the mobile app) had a 5-point Likert scale, which allowed for the feedback to be more precise than, for instance, the Yoost et al study [ 24 ], where some questions only had a 3-point Likert scale, thus providing a less exact feedback.…”

“…One of the biggest strengths of this study is the way it was developed: the development process of both the course and the mobile app was totally iterative, which means it has been improved several times during the process of its development, resulting in the final pre-educational intervention product [ 22 , 23 , 24 ]. This constant improved is reflected in the good evaluation given by pharmacists.…”

“…It is a clinical decision support system, based on 4 algorithms associated with the most common symptoms of URTIs: cough, fever, sore throat, and nasal symptoms. Based on the presence/absence and intensity of the different symptoms, the app guides the most likely diagnosis and possible therapeutic or non-therapeutic approaches to treat it [ 22 , 23 , 24 ].…”

“…The questionnaire (see Supplementary Material S3 ) has three main sections: (1) sociodemographic data (five questions on gender, age, education level, specialty, and years of experience); (2) four groups of closed questions for quantitative evaluation of the online course contents and clinical cases and the mobile app (classified in five parameters from “Totally disagree” to “Totally agree”), and (3) six open-answer questions to qualitatively evaluate the online course and the mobile app. The dimensions defined to evaluate the platforms were proposed among the research team members, who are experts in usability and user experience [ 22 , 24 , 25 ].…”