Effectiveness Evaluation of It's Your Game: Keep It Real, a Middle School HIV/Sexually Transmitted Infection/Pregnancy Prevention Program.

PURPOSE

This study assessed the effectiveness of the HIV/sexually transmitted infection/pregnancy prevention program, It's Your Game: Keep It Real (IYG).

METHODS

IYG was implemented by classroom teachers in 24 urban middle schools from 2012 to 2015. Using a quasi-experimental design, each year we surveyed ninth-grade students in 10 high schools that were selected based on feeder patterns from project middle schools. We compared two groups of students (n = 4,562): (1) students whose middle school grade cohorts did not receive IYG ("No-IYG"), and (2) students whose middle school grade cohorts received IYG ("IYG"). Multilevel analyses examined differences between the two groups in the initiation of any type of sexual activity (oral, vaginal, or anal sex), presexual behaviors, and psychosocial mediators.

RESULTS

Students in the IYG group were less likely to report initiation of sexual activity by ninth grade compared to students in the No-IYG group (odds ratio .77; 95% confidence interval .66-.90). The IYG group was significantly less likely to have engaged in presexual behaviors, including having been on a date, had a boyfriend/girlfriend, and touched or been touched on private body parts. The IYG group had better outcomes on 11 of 19 psychosocial variables, including knowledge; beliefs about abstinence, sex, friends' beliefs, norms, and behaviors; reasons for not having sex; personal limits; exposure to risky situations; self-efficacy; and quality of dating relationships.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggest that IYG, when implemented on a large scale by trained classroom teachers in urban public schools, had positive impacts on students' behaviors, beliefs, and knowledge.