Adolescents and Young Adults Evaluating a Website for Affective-Sexual Information and Education: A Mixed-Methods Study Protocol

Abstract

The website Sexe Joves is a website on sexuality of the Department of Health of the Government of Catalonia (Spain). This study aims to understand the experiences and opinions of people aged 14 to 25 regarding this website, taking into account sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and location within Catalonia (urban, semiurban and rural areas). With the objective of improving the website and adpating the resources allocated to it, this study evaluates whether this population is familiar with it and uses it, as well as the website’s usability and accessibility (digital equity), usefulness and the relevance of its content. A parallel convergent triangulation design is used: a qualitative study using a social constructivist perspective, and an observational, descriptive and cross-sectional quantitative study. We conduct a discourse analysis of participants and use an “ad hoc” questionnaire to collect quantitative data. A descriptive analysis of all variables is carried out. Affective-sexual education aimed at young people must stem from their participation and the whole range of sexual and gender diversity in order to reach the entire population equally. This analysis will contribute to the design of new strategies for the wesbite Sexe Joves, a public health resource, in order to improve affective-sexual education for young people.

Adolescents and Young Adults Evaluating a Website for Affective-Sexual Information and Education: Multicenter Cross-Sectional Study

“…This study forms part of a larger mixed methods project titled "Adolescents and Young Adults Evaluating a Website for Affective-Sexual Information and Education in Catalonia." To our knowledge, this is the first study to thoroughly explore the type of sex education demanded by the youth today in Spain [3].…”

“…Young people today claim they have received sex education too late and many have already had sexual encounters. They generally define it as a coitocentric, biomedical, heteropatriarchal, and binary model [3]. This paradigm of sexual education is based on fear and prioritizes preventing unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).…”

“…It essentially only takes into account sex focused on penetration. The lack of affective-sexual education that promotes positive sexuality based on self-esteem, self-care, and self-knowledge, as well as respect and empathy [3], together with the ease of accessing mainstream pornography-which young people often accidentally arrive at when searching for other topics on the internet-lead to a lack of healthy references for young people with regard to their sexuality [2,4].…”

“…The website offers information on affection, self-esteem, knowledge about one's body, abuse, harassment, sexual assault, sex and drugs, and cybersex. It also includes a virtual consultation room (email and chats), where a team of midwives provides individualized care and links to health centers that offer face-to-face or telephone consultations [3]. The website is designed for 14-to 25-year-olds.…”

“…The dissertation concluded that the quality of responses to emails was high and that up-to-date training of professionals who answer these emails would be sufficient to reduce inadequate responses [7]. The editorial committee has now commissioned the research team of this project to undertake an in-depth evaluation of the website centered around the voice of the youth of Catalonia [3]. After a systematic review, the need to conduct a mixed methods study became clear since, on the one hand, the editorial committee requested that an in-depth design be developed with the participation of the website users, young people, to understand their discourses.…”