Making Smart Choices: A Serious Game for Sex Education for Young Adolescents

Current educational resources for sex education in Hong Kong are mainly designed to be used in classroom. They are mostly text-based and are unattractive to the most vulnerable adolescent group. As discussion on sex is still taboo in Chinese society, self-learning resources can supplement classroom teaching. This paper describes an interactive game playable on Facebook, iPad and the web to educate young adolescents with reliable knowledge and positive attitudes towards relationship and sex and life skills necessary for making wise decisions regarding love and sex in a fun way. The effectiveness and acceptance of the game were evaluated by more than 1000 grades 7-9 students from six schools. The results showed that after playing the game, students’ sex knowledge improved with a medium effect size. The students were mostly receptive to the game, finding it fun to play with and describing the content as “interesting”, “interactive”, “informative”, “close to reality” and “applicable”. Making Smart Choices: A Serious Game for Sex Education for Young Adolescents

[1]  Albert Sangrà,et al.  Educational Design as a Key Issue in Planning for Quality Improvement , 2007 .

[2]  Yoram Reich,et al.  Varieties and issues of participation and design , 1996 .

[3]  M. Hayter,et al.  Pubescent male students' attitudes towards menstruation in Taiwan: implications for reproductive health education and school nursing practice. , 2012, Journal of clinical nursing.

[4]  J. Bergold,et al.  Participatory Research Methods: A Methodological Approach in Motion , 2012 .

[6]  K. Shin,et al.  Sex education during the school-aged years influences sexual attitudes and sexual health in college: a comparative study from Korea. , 2011, Nursing & health sciences.

[7]  M. Hayter,et al.  Chinese Adolescents’ Attitudes Toward Sexual Relationships and Premarital Sex , 2014, The Journal of school nursing : the official publication of the National Association of School Nurses.

[8]  George D. Magoulas,et al.  E-Infrastructures and Technologies for Lifelong Learning: Next Generation Environments , 2011 .

[9]  F. Manganello.  Constructivist Instruction: Success or Failure? , 2010 .

[10]  D. Kirby,et al.  Sex and HIV education programs: their impact on sexual behaviors of young people throughout the world. , 2007, The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine.

[11]  Jeremy Birnholtz,et al.  Building Bridges: Combining Webcasting and Videoconferencing in a Multi-Campus University Course , 2011 .

[12]  D. Shek.  Sexual behavior and intention to engage in sexual behavior in junior secondary school students in Hong Kong. , 2013, Journal of pediatric and adolescent gynecology.

[13]  A. Chang,et al.  Knowledge of and Attitudes Toward Sex among Chinese Adolescents , 2001, Western journal of nursing research.

[14]  Liying Zhang,et al.  Premarital Sexual Activities Among Students in a University in Beijing, China , 2002, Sexually transmitted diseases.

[15]  Maurice Hendrix,et al.  The development approach of a pedagogically-driven serious game to support Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) within a classroom setting , 2013, Comput. Educ..

[16]  Albert Bandura,et al.  Modeling Theory: Some Traditions, Trends, and Disputes , 1972 .

[17]  D. Herbenick,et al.  School-based condom education and its relations with diagnoses of and testing for sexually transmitted infections among men in the United States. , 2009, American journal of public health.

[18]  Joel E. Foreman.  Game-Based Learning: How to Delight and Instruct in The 21st Century. , 2004 .

[19]  S. Okazaki.  Influences of culture on Asian Americans' sexuality , 2002, Journal of sex research.