"This can be a powerful tool": Peer sexuality education during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in shifts in college education and subsequently peer sexuality education for college students. We examine one case study of a peer sexuality education group's challenges and benefits of navigating from in-person to online sexuality education work. We include reflexive journal entries from past and current members (n = 5), a survey from past and current members (n = 4), and organizational artifacts. We find challenges from both the peer education work itself and within the organization as well as benefits of accessibility and addressing marginalized topics in online spaces. Our findings suggest that future virtual peer education may require strong infrastructure and virtual education skills. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Impacts of electronic device use on adolescents' sexual knowledge, attitude and perception during the COVID-19 pandemic: A representative sexuality survey.

Background: COVID-19 pandemic has led to school closure and social distancing measures for infection control. Many young people thus spent more time on electronic devices and the Internet. This study aimed to determine if and how sexual knowledge, perception and behavior as well as sexuality among Hong Kong adolescents were affected as a result. Methods: Youth Sexuality Study conducted by The Family Planning Association of Hong Kong (FPAHK) evaluated the sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviors and sexual health of youth every 5 years since 1981 with adaptations made to the changing environment. We analyzed this cross-sectional data on sexual knowledge, attitude, and experiences as well as the impacts of COVID-19 on daily life, health and relationships. Univariate analysis was conducted to investigate the relationships between the time spent on electronic devices and sexuality, while mediation analyses using the PROCESS procedure were performed to further explore differences in time spent on electronic devices. Results: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of our participants spent more time on social media and browsing the Internet on electronic devices with less time for extracurricular activities and learning. Nonetheless, there was better overall sexual knowledge and a lower degree of sexual stigma with a higher overall acceptance of sexual minorities. The mediation analyses found that sexual content [Conditional effect = 0.024 (95% CI 0.008, 0.043)] and engagement online [Conditional effect = 0.036 (CI 0.021, 0.053)] could indirectly influence the effect of screen time on the frequency of sexual practices. Conclusion: Policymakers and frontline professionals should re-examine the pedagogy of the present sex education and consider online sex education as the key mode of delivery while guiding the proper use of electronic devices in the learning and exploration of sexual knowledge.

Sexting motives and sexting behavior among emerging adults in Malaysia during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown

Sexting behavior is a contemporary form of sexual expression where people can send, receive, and exchange sexually suggestive content online. The COVID-19 pandemic lockdown has greatly exposed emerging adults to sexting behavior. The present study aimed to examine the level of engagement in sexting behavior and the sexting motives (intimacy, enhancement, self-affirmation, coping, peer pressure, partner approval) among emerging adults in Malaysia during the pandemic lockdown period. Men and individuals in a relationship were previously observed to have reported a higher engagement in sexting. Therefore, the present study also investigated the differences in gender and relationship status in sexting behavior. A cross-sectional quantitative study was adopted to recruit 252 emerging adult respondents (Mage = 22.84, SDage = 2.05, females = 53.1%) through a purposive sampling method. The descriptive statistics indicated that nine in 10 emerging adults sexted and that an independent t-test depicted men and individuals in relationships being more likely to engage in sexting behavior. The hierarchical linear regression too showed that sexting motives of intimacy, enhancement, peer pressure, and partner approval contributed to a higher level of sexting behavior. Overall, the results may serve as resourceful input for future revisions and implementation of sexual reproductive health education.

Leveraging community partnerships: Conversion of a sexual health curriculum as a virtual teaching tool for middle schoolers

The disruption of in-person delivery of a sexual health education curriculum to students in 19 urban middle schools in the Midwestern United States was one of many complications in education due the COVID-19 pandemic. Given time constraints and need for program delivery, community partners collaborated to convert the curriculum for virtual delivery. A team of school health education experts, sexual health education professionals, educational psychologists, and an E-learning professional worked together in curriculum conversion, leveraging knowledge and expertise for production of a virtual sexual health education curriculum tool for educators to use for teaching middle school students learning in a virtual format and as an aid for future in-person delivery.

Sex ed lessons from COVID-19

In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States was brought to a virtual standstill. National, state, and local governments, as well as the private sector, took stark measures to stem new cases of COVID-19 and "flatten the curve." Among these measures were the closure of in-person classes at schools and universities and reduced access to in-person health care services. During the summer of 2020, the authors conducted an open-ended online survey with a convenience sample of sexuality educators, asking about their professional experiences in teaching sexuality education during the height of the pandemic. This article summarizes eight major themes that surfaced from a systematic analysis of the survey data and the authors' commentary and lists of tips for teaching sexuality education virtually. Despite a multitude of challenges presented by the pandemic, sexuality educators found innovative ways to reach youth and adults with information and skills needed to make healthy decisions about their sexual health, link them to services, and advocate on their behalf. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

A Study on the Analysis of and Educational Solution for Digital Sex Crimes in Korea.

With the development and spread of information and communication technology, our society is experiencing side effects of digital culture while also benefiting from various digital cultures. Representative side effects have spread significantly, including Internet addiction, copyright infringement, personal information infringement, and digital sex crimes. Digital sex crimes are very serious crimes, and we must find their causes and strongly prevent and deal with them at the social level. In this study, the causes and routes of occurrence of digital sex crimes in Korea are analyzed using statistics on digital sex crimes at the national level over the past four years. The statistical analysis results are as follows. First, the main victims of digital sex crimes are women in their teens and twenties, though the number of male victims is steadily increasing. Second, illegal filming is the most common type of digital sex crime, but it is not statistically significant. In other words, various digital sex crimes are occurring evenly. Third, the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator demonstrates the most temporary relationship, and there is no significant correlation between direct and indirect recognition with respect to the route of crime recognition. Finally, deletion by a digital platform is the highest for adult sites compared to other platforms. Based on these analysis results, this study proposes educational countermeasures to digital sex crimes, such as the need for early education to prevent digital sex crimes and the diversification of crime-reporting methods via the establishment of an educational portal site.

Measured and unmeasured contributions of peer education: experiences from the Get Up, Speak Out for Youth Rights! (GUSO) programme in Kisumu and Siaya Counties, Kenya

Peer education is a widely used strategy in sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) programmes for young people, yet measurement of its effectiveness often focuses on a narrow set of outcomes. This qualitative study explored how peer education was integrated into the Get Up, Speak Out for Youth Rights! (GUSO) programme in Kisumu and Siaya Counties, Kenya and the contribution it made to measured and unmeasured outcomes. Findings indicate that whilst peer educators were a central part of the GUSO theory of change, the intentionality of design varied between partners and sites, and their contributions were formally measured only in relation to two of five outcome areas. In addition to their contributions to these measured outcomes, the study found that peer educators also contributed to a range of other, unmeasured outcomes related to community support and mobilisation;gender norms;and economic empowerment. Findings show that peer educators may contribute to many unmeasured – and sometimes unexpected – outcomes that go beyond traditional measurement of their contributions. These merit further exploration in the literature and in programming. Programme developers are encouraged to be more intentional in the design and measurement of peer education, ensuring that the breadth of its contribution to programming are recognised.

PRESENTACIÓN

Se presenta una introducción que discute sobre las realidades específicas del espacio educativo con el enfoque de las Claves eco feministas y comunitarias frente al cierre escolar por COVID-19 en México, 2020-2021 y la transversalidad de la Educación Sexual Integra.

Sexual health literacy and preventive behaviors among middle-school students in a rural area during the COVID-19 situation: A mixed methods study.

Background: This study explored the association between sexual health literacy (SHL) and preventive behaviors of pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among middle-school students during the COVID-19 outbreak to aid in the development of an informative program. Methods: Mixed-method study with stratified two-stage cluster sampling was used to obtain 730 students from 20 middle schools in a rural province of Thailand. Online self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data from February 2020 to February 2021. Two brainstorming sessions were conducted with a purposeful sample of 25 stakeholders. Multiple linear regressions were used to assess the relationships. Results: The associated significant factors with the preventive behaviors were sex (b=2.06, 95% CI: 1.07, 3.05), nightlife (b=-2.33, 95% CI: -3.99, -0.67), drinking alcoholic beverages (b=2.24, 95% CI: -3.24, -1.23), sexual intercourse experience (b=-2.64, 95% CI: -4.56, -0.72), and SHL (b=0.12, 95% CI: 0.08, 0.16). The stakeholders recommended an edutainment online program via Facebook. Conclusion: This study investigated factors associated with SHL and preventive behaviors among middle school students. The most effective variable in this model was SHL. Therefore, a trial of an online program emphasizing SHL improvement should be examined for effectiveness among these students and seems appropriate, considering their rural area context and middle-school status.

"¿PROBASTE EL SEXO VIRTUAL?": DISCURSO SEXOLÓGICO Y CULTURA DIGITAL EN ÉPOCAS DE COVID-19

En este trabajo, se exploran los discursos sobre sexualidad que, en el contexto de la pandemia de covid-19, se (re)producen y circulan en las cuentas de Instagram de seis sexólogas argentinas que hacen educación sexual y divulgan su trabajo profesional a través de dicha red social. A partir de exploraciones etnográficas digitales se analizó como estas profesionales construyen un modo de narrar los saberes de la sexología en internet;despliegan actividades pedagógicas que las posicionan como nuevas referentes en el campo de la sexología nacional y configuran una red de instagramers que se dedican a la educación sexual.Alternate :In this paper, it is exploring the discourses on sexuality that, in the context of the covid-19 pandemic, are reproduce and circulate on Instagram accounts of six Argentine sexologists who do sex education and publicize their professional work through these social media. From digital ethnographic explorations we analyze how these professionals construct a way of narrating the knowledge of sexology on the internet;deploy pedagogical activities that position them as new references in the field of national sexology and configure a network of "instagramers" dedicated to sex education.

From the boardroom to the bedroom: Sexual ecologies in the algorithmic age

This project examined traditional gendered discourses surrounding the ends and means of sexuality, the emerging role of digital sexual technologies in purported sexual empowerment, and the socio-material aspects which revolve around these technologies, sexual medias, and sexual discourses. Combining critical feminist insights with media ecology, this project explored happenings within the sociosexually violent pre- and present-COVID-19 United States ecology, documenting novel and rigorous contributions in our increasingly algorithmic world. This study of the U.S. context critiques foundational constructs created by Enlightenment decisionmakers who rationalized colonial rhetorics and logics built into each preceding iteration of capitalisms from industrialism into neoliberalism since national origin. As such, it extends critiques of mechanistic models of the human body and sexual communications and situates them within the vastly uncriminalized sexual violences, as well as insufficient sexual education standards. Theoretically, I argue that a mechanization of humans has occurred, been pushed to its extreme, and is flipping into a humanization of objects. To demonstrate this, I critical feminist rhetorically analyzed 75 biomimetic sextech advertisements from the brand Lora DiCarlo, contextualizing them in salient discourses within 428 present-COVID-19 TikTok videos, investigating: "What rhetorical themes occur within advertisements for biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers in the late-stage present-COVID-19 neoliberal U.S. landscape?" "How have biomimetic sexual technologies marketed to vulva-havers effected how their sexual experiences are created and maintained in the sociosexual U.S. landscape?" and "How are biomimetic sextech changing vulva-havers sexual sense-making, experiences, and relations within the sexually violent late-stage capitalist present-COVID-19 U.S. landscape?" Using a feminist eye, this brings to media ecology a contextualization of biomimetic sextech devices marketed to vulva-havers, situating their socio-political and cultural nuances in conversation with otherwise taken for granted biological components of cisnormative and heteronormative life, among other relevant characteristics. Ergo, this project debuts a brand new liberatory embodied research paradigm. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

The Influencing Factors of Comprehensive Sexuality Education Capacity and Its Correlation with Subjective Social Status among Chinese Junior High School Students.

(1) Objective: Evidence suggests that comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) can protect and empower younger generations to advocate for their reproductive health and wellbeing. This survey aims to investigate the current status and influencing factors of CSE among Chinese junior high school students, and to evaluate its correlation with the learning experience of sex education and subjective social status (SSS) to provide evidence for the implementation of CSE in the future. (2) Methods: A total of 4109 participants aged 11 to 16 years were recruited using data from a cross-sectional survey among junior high school students in China in 2021. CSE knowledge, attitude, and skills were used to generate the CSE comprehensive capacity by a principal component analysis. One-way ANOVA was used to assess the different effects of school sex education and family sex education. Multiple linear regression was used to assess the association between CSE comprehensive capacity and SSS. (3) Results: The average score of CSE comprehensive capacity was 82.44 ± 8.60 (with a total score of 100 points) among participants. After the adjustment, subjective social status was positively related to CSE comprehensive capacity (B = 0.28, 95% CI: 0.20-0.36), and SSS (School) (beta = 0.62) had a higher impact on CSE comprehensive capacity compared to SSS (Family) (beta = -0.10). School sex education was associated with the CSE knowledge level with a larger magnitude compared to family sex education (mean deviation = -0.53, p = 0.031), whereas family sex education was related to the CSE skill level with a greater magnitude (mean deviation =1.14, p = 0.005). (4) Conclusions: These findings suggest that sex education at school and within the family might have a different impact on CSE capacity, which was positively associated with SSS among junior high school students.

Impacts of International Education Shifts through Transnation Stories of Three Vietnamese Doctoral Students

In response to COVID-19 global outbreaks, Canada, and Australia, two favored destinations by international students, as the contexts of this essay, have enacted different international education policies, which will be investigated through the narratives. The authors discuss transnationality and mobility as key terms in the internationalization of higher education (HE) studies through their experiences as three Vietnamese doctoral students in Canada and Australia. Transnationality is attended through a narrative of a Vietnamese returnee struggling with bringing unfamiliar knowledge of gender and sex education from the West into a Vietnamese HE context. Mobility is unpacked through stories of a Vietnamese doctoral student in Canada stuck in Vietnam due to the COVID-19 despite inviting policies from the Canadian government to international students. This experience is connected to another Vietnamese student’s experience in Australia about a controversial act to discourage international students from staying in Australia if they cannot support themselves during the pandemic. The authors’ stories are created and retold personally for introspective and contemplative reflections on what the authors have experienced and offer considerations for how transnationality and mobility in international and comparative education could be understood through education, equity, and inclusion.

How Substance Use Treatment Services in Iran Survived Despite a Dual Catastrophic Situation

The prevalence of opium, residual opium juice (shireh), crystal methamphetamine, hashish, and heroin use in Iran is 150, 660, 590, 470, and 350 per 100 000 population, respectively.1 Substance use disorder is ranked as one ofthe top four health burdens in Iran.2 Addressing this health crisis has required the legalization of a variety of treatments and harm reduction services, the domestic production of opioid medications, available and low-cost opioid medications, available opium tincture with its short induction period, using seized opium to produce opium tincture, online self-help groups, and coordination among government agencies, the private health care sector, and nongovernmental organizations. HARM REDUCTION SERVICES IN IRAN The largest number of patients are served in private outpatient clinics that offer opioid agonist treatment, although abstinence-based residential centers and therapeutic communities are available in the private sector and the government runs compulsory residential centers.6 In 2018, an estimated 60 000 persons were under methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) while in prison, about 720 000 community residents were receiving MMT, approximately 120 000 were receiving buprenorphine, and about 93 000 were receiving opium tinctures from 1 of 196 government-run outpatient clinics or one of 7029 private outpatient clinics.6 Harm reduction services and facilities such as drop-in centers and outreach programs provide needle and syringe programs, low-threshold methadone treatment, condom promotion, and safer sex education. [...]clinics were authorized to provide larger take-home supplies of methadone, buprenorphine, and opium tincture for their stable patients.8 Although patients did not experience any shortage of opioid maintenance medications, there were fewer psychological services available because of COVID-19 prevention policies and the lack of online services. Methadone is also much less expensive than buprenorphine, and there are seven times more methadone patients than buprenorphine patients in Iran.10 Moreover, local opium tincture manufacture uses seized opium,11 which reduces production costs.12 * Reducing the need for harm reduction: Because of the availability of opioid maintenance medications, in past years the number of PWID decreased and the impact of this is seen in the reduced prevalence of HIV among PWID in Iran.13 This phenomenon has reduced the costs of harm reduction services because fewer harm reduction facilities are needed.

Factors Influencing Elementary Teachers’ Readiness in Delivering Sex Education amidst Covid-19 pandemic

The emergence of variants of Covid-19, the persistence of lockdowns in many countries, and the necessity to maintain sustainable education have resulted in a shift from the traditional classroom to virtual space. As such, there is a strong need to leverage technological advances while mitigating the challenges faced by primary teachers. Through the incorporation of eight elements, the authors sought to better understand factors that influence teacher readiness to deliver sex education in primary schools. Structural Equation Modeling was employed to assess the proposed conceptual model. The online survey was designed and distributed by Google Forms. Based on the results from 383 individuals, the findings revealed that facilitating conditions, educational policy, and parental involvement all had a relationship with teacher readiness. Digital content positively influenced performance expectancy and effort expectancy. Sexual knowledge had a statistically significant and positive influence on effort expectancy. Finally, openness had a statistically significant and positive influence on performance expectancy. The significant exceptions were that effort expectancy was not found to predict teacher readiness, and performance expectancy was not found to influence teacher readiness. The reasons for these non-significant correlations were briefly discussed and more studies on this topic are called to investigate these unexpected outcomes in more detail. The level of readiness, as well as theoretical and practical implications for scholars and practitioners, were discussed. ©Authors

Understand Sexual Risk Behaviours in Young Adults and Challenges in Their Education

Sexual risk behaviours are considered sexual conducts that can cause biological, psychological and social damage. Therefore, sexuality education is considered the only effective way to avoid it. This project aims to understand sexual risk behaviour factors and their consequences in young adults and to explore strategies they would use to face them. To answer these questions, we conducted a qualitative study in which we interviewed 11 young adults using an asynchronous mail technique due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We also carried out a thematic analysis and developed our key results: 1) Sexual attitudes and behaviours;2) Sexual risk factors, 3) Sexual risk consequences;and 4) Educational approach and strategies. Similarities in the themes were verified with previous literature, exposing the importance of learning to identify factors and consequences to respond appropriately. Participants believe that comprehensive and egalitarian sexuality education applied at individual and community level is a solid method that can improve sexual health and well-being. To conclude, this study reveals the importance of listening to young adults' perspectives towards these conduct variables and educational approaches in order to establish global health strategies that could be based on these results.