The New Jersey Physicians Advisory Group (NJPAG) - is conducting a rigorous evaluation of the Personal Responsibility Education - YES You Can! (PRE-YYC!) Project. This evaluation will test the effects of the 9thgrade YES You Can…Make Smart Choices! curriculum and an innovative text messaging intervention, implemented separately and in combination. The proposed project will provide strong evidence as to the effectiveness of these interventions.~PRE-YYC! seeks to empower young people to create healthy relationships and delay sexual activity by providing them with evidence-informed, medically sound, trauma-informed education on both abstinence and contraception and to also teach five adult preparation subjects 1) healthy relationships 2) adolescent development 3) financial literacy 4) healthy life skills, and 5) strengthening parent-child communication.~The Center for Evidence-Based Programming (CEBP) will lead the evaluation. CEBP has assembled a strong evaluation team with members who have extensive evaluation experience, experience leading RCT projects and publishing results, and have received numerous national and institutional awards for their research and evaluation work. The proposed rigorous evaluation will use a matched-pair, cluster-randomization design, to randomly assign schools to curriculum or control conditions. Students will be individually randomized to receive or not receive the text-messaging intervention. This will result in four statistically equivalent groups: (1) curriculum only, (2) curriculum + text-messaging, (3) text-messaging only, (4) control.~The project has the following objectives:~Objective 1: Provide in-school instruction of the YES You Can-Make Smart Choices! (YYC-Choices!) curriculum to 9th-grade students in the Essex County schools assigned to receive the curriculum.~Objective 2: Provide text messages to students who are randomly assigned to receive the text message intervention. This will include roughly 50 percent of the students who complete the YYC! curriculum and 50 percent of the students who do not receive the YYC! curriculum.~The primary research questions are: (a) At the six-month follow-up, are students who participate in the YYC-Choices! curriculum, with or without the text messaging component, less likely to report participation in sexual intercourse (ever and in the last three months), when compared to conditions that do not include the curriculum. (b) Are there differences between conditions that include the curriculum and those that do not, at the twelve-month follow-up?~The secondary research questions include: (a) At the six-month follow-up, do students who participate in the YYC-Choices! curriculum, with or without the text messaging intervention, demonstrate: (1) increased intent to delay sexual intercourse, (2) improvement in healthy relationship skills, including communication, (3) more negative attitudes toward dating violence, (4) increased knowledge of adolescent development, (5) improvement in financial literacy, and (6) improvement in health life skills, - when compared to conditions that do not include the YYC-Choices! curriculum? (b) Are differences between conditions that include the curriculum and those that do not at the twelve-month follow-up?~An innovative feature of the program is the text-messaging component. The investigators will not just compare the scores of those assigned to the text-messaging component. Among those assigned to the text-messaging component investigators will obtain engagement scores. These will be based on the number of text-messages a participant opens + the number of messages to which the participant responds. This will provide a measure of engagement/dose.~The testing instrument will be a self-report on-line questionnaire, accessed using Qualtrics Survey Software. The investigators have conducted cognitive testing of the questionnaire with 9th grade students, similar to the students who will be study participants. Additionally, the investigators have conducted focus groups to discuss the text messaging component. The investigators anticipate piloting the interventions in selected schools in Essex County, New Jersey beginning late in the 2022 spring semester. This will involve only 9th grade students who receive the curriculum. There will be no control group. When students submit their completed questionnaire, Qualtrics will randomize they to the text messaging condition or no text-messaging.~Based on questionnaire and text messaging results and qualitative feedback from participants and program facilitators, the investigators will make revisions over the summer and continue the pilot programming early in the fall, 2022 semester. The investigators expect to begin the full, rigorous evaluation study during the 2023 semester.
This evaluation will test the effects of the 9th grade YES You Can (YYC) program and an innovative text messaging intervention implemented separately and in combination. The project will be implemented in schools in Essex County, New Jersey. The evaluation will use a matched-pair cluster-randomization design, to randomly assign schools to program or control conditions. Students will be individually randomized to receive or not receive the text-messaging intervention. This will result in four statistically equivalent groups: (1) YYC only (2) YYC + text-messaging (3) text-messaging only (4) control.The primary research questions are: At the six month and 12 month follow-ups are students who participate in the YYC program, with or without text messaging, less likely to report participation in sexual intercourse (ever and in the last three months), when compared to conditions that do not include the YYC program. Additional secondary research questions will also be addressed. The Center for Evidence-Based Programming (CEBP) will lead the evaluation.