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      Sex Education in the Spotlight: What Is Working? Systematic Review

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          Abstract

          Adolescence, a period of physical, social, cognitive and emotional development, represents a target population for sexual health promotion and education when it comes to achieving the 2030 Agenda goals for sustainable and equitable societies. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of what is known about the dissemination and effectiveness of sex education programs and thereby to inform better public policy making in this area. Methodology: We carried out a systematic review based on international scientific literature, in which only peer-reviewed papers were included. To identify reviews, we carried out an electronic search of the Cochrane Database Reviews, ERIC, Web of Science, PubMed, Medline, Scopus and PsycINFO. This paper provides a narrative review of reviews of the literature from 2015 to 2020. Results: 20 reviews met the inclusion criteria (10 in school settings, 9 using digital platforms and 1 blended learning program): they focused mainly on reducing risk behaviors (e.g., VIH/STIs and unwanted pregnancies), whilst obviating themes such as desire and pleasure, which were not included in outcome evaluations. The reviews with the lowest risk of bias are those carried out in school settings and are the ones that most question the effectiveness of sex education programs. Whilst the reviews of digital platforms and blended learning show greater effectiveness in terms of promoting sexual and reproductive health in adolescents (ASRH), they nevertheless also include greater risks of bias. Conclusion: A more rigorous assessment of the effectiveness of sexual education programs is necessary, especially regarding the opportunities offered by new technologies, which may lead to more cost-effective interventions than with in-person programs. Moreover, blended learning programs offer a promising way forward, as they combine the best of face-to-face and digital interventions, and may provide an excellent tool in the new context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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          AMSTAR 2: a critical appraisal tool for systematic reviews that include randomised or non-randomised studies of healthcare interventions, or both

          Beverley Shea, Barnaby Reeves, George Wells … (2017)
          The number of published systematic reviews of studies of healthcare interventions has increased rapidly and these are used extensively for clinical and policy decisions. Systematic reviews are subject to a range of biases and increasingly include non-randomised studies of interventions. It is important that users can distinguish high quality reviews. Many instruments have been designed to evaluate different aspects of reviews, but there are few comprehensive critical appraisal instruments. AMSTAR was developed to evaluate systematic reviews of randomised trials. In this paper, we report on the updating of AMSTAR and its adaptation to enable more detailed assessment of systematic reviews that include randomised or non-randomised studies of healthcare interventions, or both. With moves to base more decisions on real world observational evidence we believe that AMSTAR 2 will assist decision makers in the identification of high quality systematic reviews, including those based on non-randomised studies of healthcare interventions.
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            Development of AMSTAR: a measurement tool to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews

            Beverley Shea, Jeremy M. Grimshaw, George A Wells … (2007)
            Background Our objective was to develop an instrument to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews, building upon previous tools, empirical evidence and expert consensus. Methods A 37-item assessment tool was formed by combining 1) the enhanced Overview Quality Assessment Questionnaire (OQAQ), 2) a checklist created by Sacks, and 3) three additional items recently judged to be of methodological importance. This tool was applied to 99 paper-based and 52 electronic systematic reviews. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify underlying components. The results were considered by methodological experts using a nominal group technique aimed at item reduction and design of an assessment tool with face and content validity. Results The factor analysis identified 11 components. From each component, one item was selected by the nominal group. The resulting instrument was judged to have face and content validity. Conclusion A measurement tool for the 'assessment of multiple systematic reviews' (AMSTAR) was developed. The tool consists of 11 items and has good face and content validity for measuring the methodological quality of systematic reviews. Additional studies are needed with a focus on the reproducibility and construct validity of AMSTAR, before strong recommendations can be made on its use.
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              Utilization of the PICO framework to improve searching PubMed for clinical questions

              Connie Schardt, Martha Adams, Thomas Owens … (2007)
              Background Supporting 21st century health care and the practice of evidence-based medicine (EBM) requires ubiquitous access to clinical information and to knowledge-based resources to answer clinical questions. Many questions go unanswered, however, due to lack of skills in formulating questions, crafting effective search strategies, and accessing databases to identify best levels of evidence. Methods This randomized trial was designed as a pilot study to measure the relevancy of search results using three different interfaces for the PubMed search system. Two of the search interfaces utilized a specific framework called PICO, which was designed to focus clinical questions and to prompt for publication type or type of question asked. The third interface was the standard PubMed interface readily available on the Web. Study subjects were recruited from interns and residents on an inpatient general medicine rotation at an academic medical center in the US. Thirty-one subjects were randomized to one of the three interfaces, given 3 clinical questions, and asked to search PubMed for a set of relevant articles that would provide an answer for each question. The success of the search results was determined by a precision score, which compared the number of relevant or gold standard articles retrieved in a result set to the total number of articles retrieved in that set. Results Participants using the PICO templates (Protocol A or Protocol B) had higher precision scores for each question than the participants who used Protocol C, the standard PubMed Web interface. (Question 1: A = 35%, B = 28%, C = 20%; Question 2: A = 5%, B = 6%, C = 4%; Question 3: A = 1%, B = 0%, C = 0%) 95% confidence intervals were calculated for the precision for each question using a lower boundary of zero. However, the 95% confidence limits were overlapping, suggesting no statistical difference between the groups. Conclusion Due to the small number of searches for each arm, this pilot study could not demonstrate a statistically significant difference between the search protocols. However there was a trend towards higher precision that needs to be investigated in a larger study to determine if PICO can improve the relevancy of search results.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Paul B. Tchounwou: Role: Academic Editor
                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): Int J Environ Res Public Health
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Int J Environ Res Public Health
                Journal ID (publisher-id): ijerph
                Title: International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
                Publisher: MDPI
                ISSN (Print): 1661-7827
                ISSN (Electronic): 1660-4601
                Publication date (Electronic): 04 March 2021
                Publication date Collection: March 2021
                Volume: 18
                Issue: 5
                Electronic Location Identifier: 2555
                Affiliations
                Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Vigo, 32004 Ourense, Spain; rosana.mr@ 123456uvigo.es (R.M.-R.); mavicarrera@ 123456uvigo.es (M.V.C.-F.); yrcastro@ 123456uvigo.es (Y.R.-C.)
                Author notes
                [* ]Correspondence: lameiras@ 123456uvigo.es ; Tel.: +34-988-387-121
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9196-765X
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1122-5585
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2158-3084
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9965-2348
                Article
                Publisher ID: ijerph-18-02555
                DOI: 10.3390/ijerph18052555
                PMC ID: 7967369
                PubMed ID: 33806507
                SO-VID: 4dc84e6b-0711-4f05-bba4-e9b726bd5eaa
                Copyright © © 2021 by the authors.
                License:

                Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

                History
                Date received : 21 January 2021
                Date accepted : 02 March 2021
                Categories
                Subject: Review

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health
                Keywords: adolescents,sexual education,sexual and reproductive health,review of reviews,school setting,digital platforms,blended learning
                Data availability:
                ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health
                Keywords: adolescents, sexual education, sexual and reproductive health, review of reviews, school setting, digital platforms, blended learning

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