Impacts of an Enhanced Family Health and Sexuality Module of the HealthTeacher Middle School Curriculum

Last registered on June 22, 2015
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Impacts of an Enhanced Family Health and Sexuality Module of the HealthTeacher Middle School Curriculum
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0000742
Initial registration date
June 22, 2015

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
June 22, 2015, 4:31 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region
Chicago, IL

Primary Investigator

Name
Brian Goesling
Affiliation
Mathematica Policy Research
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2010-09-01
End date
2012-05-01
Keywords
Education, Health
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
The trial examines the impacts of a HealthTeacher, a popular online K-12 health education program used by hundreds of school districts around the United States. The trial focuses specifically on an enhanced version of HealthTeacher's main sex education module for middle school students. The trial involves a sample of 7th grade students from 17 Chicago public middle schools. Among participating schools, about half were randomly assigned to a treatment group that provided HealthTeacher to 7th grade students during winter and spring of the 2010-2011 school year. The other half were assigned to a control group that did not provide the program. Follow-up data were collected over an 18-month period, through spring of 2012 when the students were in 8th grade. This study of HealthTeacher is part of the broader Evaluation of Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Approaches (PPA) study, a major federal effort to expand available evidence on effective ways to prevent and reduce pregnancy and related sexual risk behaviors among teens in the United States.
External Link(s)
More information on the trial is available on the website of the Office of Adolescent Health

Registration Citation

Citation
Goesling, Brian. 2015. "Impacts of an Enhanced Family Health and Sexuality Module of the HealthTeacher Middle School Curriculum." AEA RCT Registry. June 22. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.742-1.0
Former Citation
Goesling, Brian. 2015. "Impacts of an Enhanced Family Health and Sexuality Module of the HealthTeacher Middle School Curriculum." AEA RCT Registry. June 22. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/742/history/4556
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Students in the intervention schools received one specific component of HealthTeacher, the Family Health and Sexuality module of the middle school curriculum. This component of the curriculum consists of nine lessons, each 45 to 90 minutes long, covering topics such as respectful behavior, adolescence, female and male reproductive anatomy, menstruation and sperm production, goal setting, abstinence, refusal skills, and sexually transmitted disease (STD)/HIV prevention. To meet state and local guidelines for 7th grade sex education in Chicago, schools also enhanced the standard nine-lesson curriculum with three additional lessons: one on contraceptive methods and two on the issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Intervention Start Date
2011-01-01
Intervention End Date
2011-05-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The study measured three groups of outcomes: (1) student exposure to information on reproductive health, contraceptive methods, and STD transmission and prevention; (2) measures of potential mediating factors such as knowledge, refusal skills, attitudes, and intentions; and (3) measures of youth sexual risk behaviors. All outcomes were measured at two time points: (1) an interim follow-up survey conducted about 6 months after the intervention and (2) a final follow-up survey conducted about 12 months after the intervention.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The trial used a cluster random assignment design. About half the schools were randomly assigned to the treatment group and half to the control group. To help improve the precision of the study’s impact estimates and to reduce the possibility of a chance imbalance between the treatment and control groups, we grouped the schools into matched pairs prior to random assignment. The matching was based on school size, the racial/ethnic composition of the student body, and the proportion of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
We used a random number generator in the SAS statistical software program to randomly assign one school to the treatment group and one to the control group
Randomization Unit
Random assignment was conducted at the school level.
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
17 schools
Sample size: planned number of observations
1,534 seventh grade students
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
9 schools treatment, 8 schools control
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Public/Private Ventures Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2010-02-15
IRB Approval Number
10-NIRB-071
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials