Evidence-Based Programs
What Could You Do?
- Overview of the Curriculum
- Unique Features of the Curriculum
- Ordering and Training Information
- Evaluation Fact Sheet
Overview of the Curriculum
What Could You Do? is an interactive video intervention aimed at increasing young women's ability to make less risky sexual health decisions. The video includes vignettes during which viewers are presented with specific options to choose from related to sexual behaviors. The intervention is designed to increase knowledge of STDs, decrease sexual risk behaviors, and decrease STD acquisition among female high school students.
What Could You Do? was developed to provide a cost-effective method of delivering an STD risk-reduction intervention for adolescent females.
Curriculum Sessions
The What Could You Do? interactive video consists of four sections:
- Sexual situations
- Risk reduction
- Reproductive health, and
- STDs
Video content is presented by ethnically diverse adolescent girls engaging in realistic scenarios. Condom use is linked to positive outcomes such as pleasure and reassurance, rather than negative outcomes such as disease. The video is interactive, allowing viewers to select or skip sections. Viewers are given the opportunity to mentally practice how they would respond in hypothetical situations, through the frequent use of "cognitive rehearsal."
Average viewing time for the full video is 45 minutes. However, this can vary based on the viewers' selection choices at key decision points during the video. The "structured" version of the DVD follows a single story line, while the "flexible" version is more versatile and allows viewers to skip sections.
Unique Features of the Curriculum
What Could You Do? is suitable for use in physician and clinic offices. It may be suitable for use in schools provided there is privacy for the viewer as some of the material is graphic in nature.
Ordering and Training Information
Ordering: A boxed set consisting of the structured and flexible DVD is available through www.whatcouldyoudo.org/. (A version of the DVD with Spanish subtitles is under development). A digitized program package, which contains program materials in PDF format and includes the User Guide and any original Evaluation Instruments, is available at www.socio.com/passt19.php.
You may order the program materials through Sociometrics Corporation:
Program Archive on Sexuality, Health, and Adolescence (PASHA)
Sociometrics Corporation
170 State Street, Suite 260
Los Altos, CA 94022-2812
Tel. (650) 949-3282
Fax (650) 949-3299
E-mail: socio@socio.com
The Program Archive on Sexuality, Health, and Adolescence (PASHA), funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the Office of Adolescent Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, is a collection of effective program replication kits designed to reduce teen pregnancy and STI/HIV/AIDS in adolescents.
Training: No staffing or training is required for the interactive video. Only a television and DVD player, or personal-sized DVD player are needed. (Note: Although the DVD can be viewed on a computer, it functions more smoothly when viewed with a DVD player.)
Evaluation Fact Sheet
Intervention
This is a video-based program aimed at increasing knowledge of STDs, decrease sexual risk behaviors, and decrease STD acquisition in adolescent females.
Behavioral Findings
At all follow-up points, the participants in all three conditions increased their STD knowledge, both general and specific.
Participants in the video condition were more likely than their control condition counterparts to have been completely abstinent in the time from baseline to the three-month follow-up (OR = 2.5, p = 0.027). This pattern diminished between the three-month and six-month visits (OR = 1.45, p = 0.344). Although there were no significant differences in condom use among the conditions, there was a trend toward more condom use and fewer condom failures among the participants of the video condition.
At the six-month follow-up, participants in the control conditions were nearly twice as likely as video condition participants to have been diagnosed with an STD (OR = 2.79, p = .05). This pattern held for all nine reported diseases.
Research Design
Participants were recruited from four healthcare sites in the urban Pittsburgh area: a children's hospital's adolescent medicine clinic, two community health centers, and a women's teaching hospital. The young women participating in the study were all between 14 and 18 years old, and had engaged in heterosexual vaginal sex in the six months prior to the study. Most participants (75%) self identified as African American, with 15% white and 10% “Other” or mixed race. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants or from their parents/guardians for participants under 18.
Following the completion of baseline measures and a self-administered vaginal swab, participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1) interactive video (experimental condition), 2) content-matched control condition (a 127-page book containing all of the content of the interactive video), or 3) topic-matched control condition (23 commercially available brochures, with content closely matching that of the video and book). Booster sessions followed at one, three and six months after the initial intervention.
