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Engaging parents in digital sexual and reproductive health education: evidence from the JACK trial
BACKGROUND: Research evidence and international policy highlight the central role that parents play in promoting positive sexual behaviour and outcomes in their children, however they can be difficult to engage in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education programmes. Digital health promotion th...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7450800/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32854734 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12978-020-00975-y |
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author | Aventin, Áine Gough, Aisling McShane, Theresa Gillespie, Kathryn O’Hare, Liam Young, Honor Lewis, Ruth Warren, Emily Buckley, Kelly Lohan, Maria |
author_facet | Aventin, Áine Gough, Aisling McShane, Theresa Gillespie, Kathryn O’Hare, Liam Young, Honor Lewis, Ruth Warren, Emily Buckley, Kelly Lohan, Maria |
author_sort | Aventin, Áine |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Research evidence and international policy highlight the central role that parents play in promoting positive sexual behaviour and outcomes in their children, however they can be difficult to engage in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education programmes. Digital health promotion that uses online and mobile technologies (OMTs) to promote parent-child communication may offer an innovative solution to reach parents, however, few programmes have used OMTs to involve parents in SRH, and none have reported lessons learned in relation to optimising engagement. This study addresses this gap in the literature by reporting acceptability and feasibility of using OMTs to engage parents in SRH education. Findings will be relevant for those wishing to develop and implement digital SRH programmes with parents internationally. METHODS: The Jack Trial is a UK-wide cluster randomised controlled trial recruiting over 8000 adolescents from 66 socially and religiously diverse post-primary schools. An embedded mixed-methods process evaluation explored user engagement with parent components of the If I Were Jack SRH education programme, which include online animated films and a parent-teen homework exercise. RESULTS: A total of 109 adolescents, teachers, parents and SRH policy experts took part in semi-structured interviews and focus groups, 134 parents responded to an online survey, and 3179 adolescents completed a programme engagement and satisfaction questionnaire. Parents who accessed the materials were positive about them; 87% rated them as ‘good or excellent’ and 67% said they helped them have conversations with their child about SRH. Web analytics revealed that 27% of contacted parents accessed the digital materials, with 9% viewing the animated films. Only 38% of teachers implemented the homework exercise, mainly because they assumed that students would not complete it or it might result in backlash from parents. CONCLUSIONS: While digital parental materials show promise for engaging parents in SRH education, this study suggests that in order to optimise engagement, parental components that give parents the necessary skills to have conversations with their children about sex should be coupled with efforts to increase school and teacher confidence to communicate with parents on sensitive topics. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN99459996. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7450800 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-74508002020-08-28 Engaging parents in digital sexual and reproductive health education: evidence from the JACK trial Aventin, Áine Gough, Aisling McShane, Theresa Gillespie, Kathryn O’Hare, Liam Young, Honor Lewis, Ruth Warren, Emily Buckley, Kelly Lohan, Maria Reprod Health Research BACKGROUND: Research evidence and international policy highlight the central role that parents play in promoting positive sexual behaviour and outcomes in their children, however they can be difficult to engage in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education programmes. Digital health promotion that uses online and mobile technologies (OMTs) to promote parent-child communication may offer an innovative solution to reach parents, however, few programmes have used OMTs to involve parents in SRH, and none have reported lessons learned in relation to optimising engagement. This study addresses this gap in the literature by reporting acceptability and feasibility of using OMTs to engage parents in SRH education. Findings will be relevant for those wishing to develop and implement digital SRH programmes with parents internationally. METHODS: The Jack Trial is a UK-wide cluster randomised controlled trial recruiting over 8000 adolescents from 66 socially and religiously diverse post-primary schools. An embedded mixed-methods process evaluation explored user engagement with parent components of the If I Were Jack SRH education programme, which include online animated films and a parent-teen homework exercise. RESULTS: A total of 109 adolescents, teachers, parents and SRH policy experts took part in semi-structured interviews and focus groups, 134 parents responded to an online survey, and 3179 adolescents completed a programme engagement and satisfaction questionnaire. Parents who accessed the materials were positive about them; 87% rated them as ‘good or excellent’ and 67% said they helped them have conversations with their child about SRH. Web analytics revealed that 27% of contacted parents accessed the digital materials, with 9% viewing the animated films. Only 38% of teachers implemented the homework exercise, mainly because they assumed that students would not complete it or it might result in backlash from parents. CONCLUSIONS: While digital parental materials show promise for engaging parents in SRH education, this study suggests that in order to optimise engagement, parental components that give parents the necessary skills to have conversations with their children about sex should be coupled with efforts to increase school and teacher confidence to communicate with parents on sensitive topics. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ISRCTN99459996. BioMed Central 2020-08-27 /pmc/articles/PMC7450800/ /pubmed/32854734 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12978-020-00975-y Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Aventin, Áine Gough, Aisling McShane, Theresa Gillespie, Kathryn O’Hare, Liam Young, Honor Lewis, Ruth Warren, Emily Buckley, Kelly Lohan, Maria Engaging parents in digital sexual and reproductive health education: evidence from the JACK trial |
title | Engaging parents in digital sexual and reproductive health education: evidence from the JACK trial |
title_full | Engaging parents in digital sexual and reproductive health education: evidence from the JACK trial |
title_fullStr | Engaging parents in digital sexual and reproductive health education: evidence from the JACK trial |
title_full_unstemmed | Engaging parents in digital sexual and reproductive health education: evidence from the JACK trial |
title_short | Engaging parents in digital sexual and reproductive health education: evidence from the JACK trial |
title_sort | engaging parents in digital sexual and reproductive health education: evidence from the jack trial |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7450800/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32854734 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12978-020-00975-y |
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