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This project is a collaborative research-practice conducted jointly by Ipas, headquartered in Chapel Hill, and the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The principal investigators are Ellen Mitchell at Ipas and Carolyn Tucker Halpern at UNC-CH.
There are four primary objectives for the collaboration:
- to collect information, through a school-based, longitudinal research survey design, on the reproductive health and socioeconomic welfare of urban adolescents living in Kenya and Brazil;
- to test the feasibility of the World Wide Web as a secure and reliable mechanism by which to conduct repeated survey measurements, as indicated by relative attrition, missing data, and cost effectiveness;
- to assess the attractiveness and utility of the web to disseminate information and improve knowledge about health, especially reproductive health, to adolescents;
- to disseminate information about adolescent health needs that will inform and improve public health policy and practice.
The study design involves collecting data over a 1-year period from 1500 students in 3 experimental and 2 control schools in Nairobi. All students complete one paper module. The students in the 3 experimental schools complete 5 modules using the web. Knowledge of key reproductive health topics is assessed at 3 points (modules 1, 4, and 6). Modules 4 - 6 direct students to web-based information: all students are directed to general information (e.g., what is emergency contraception), and students who report specific experiences (e.g., sexual violence) are directed to community resources for those experiences. As an incentive to participate, all students at the experimental schools are given time to surf the web or do email after completing each module. Students in the control schools will complete a second paper module at about the time that students in experimental schools are completing their final web-based module. Data collection started in Nairobi in April, 2002 and ended in September, 2003.
A similar study is underway in Rio de Janeiro. It involves 4 experimental schools and 1 control school. We expect data collection to finish in Fall, 2004.
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