Generating Intervention Concepts for Reducing Adolescent Relationship Abuse Inequities Among Sexual and Gender Minority Youth: Protocol for a Web-Based, Longitudinal, Human-Centered Design Study (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY; e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth) are at greater risk than their cisgender heterosexual peers for adolescent relationship abuse (ARA; physical, sexual, or psychological abuse in a romantic relationship). However, there is a death of efficacious interventions for reducing ARA among SGMY. To address this intervention gap, we designed a novel online methodology leveraging the field of human-centered design to have SGMY generate multiple ARA intervention concepts. OBJECTIVE This protocol paper aims to describe study procedures for a pilot study to rigorously test the feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness for using online human-centered design methods with SGMY to create novel, stakeholder-driven ARA intervention concepts. METHODS We are conducting a longitudinal online human-centered design study with 45-60 SGMY (aged 14-18) recruited via social media from across the U.S. Using MURAL (a collaborative visual online workspace) and Zoom, SGMY participate in 4 group-based sessions (1.5 hours each). In Session 1, SGMY use Rose-Thorn-Bud to individually document their ideas about healthy and unhealthy relationship characteristics, and then use Affinity Clustering as a group to categorize their self-reported ideas by similarities and differences. In Session 2, SGMY use Rose-Thorn-Bud to individually critique a universal evidence-based intervention reducing ARA, and Affinity Clustering to aggregate their ideas as a group. In Session 3, SGMY use a Creative Matrix to generate intervention ideas for reducing ARA among SGMY, and force-ranked the intervention ideas based on their potential ease of implementation and potential impact using an Importance-Difficulty Matrix. In Session 4, SGMY generate and refine intervention concepts (from Session 3 ideations) for reducing ARA using Round Robin (for rapid iteration) and Concept Poster (for fleshing out ideas more fully). We will use content analyses to document the intervention concepts. In a follow-up survey, SGMY complete validated measures about the feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness of the online human-centered design methods (a priori benchmarks for success: means>3.75 on each 5-point scale). RESULTS The study was funded in February 2020. Data collection started in August 2020, and will be completed by April 2021. CONCLUSIONS By rigorously testing the feasibility of our online human-centered design methodology, our study has the potential to help legitimize the use of human-centered design methods to engage hard-toreach stakeholders in the field of public health and to actively involve them in the co-creation of interventions that may impact them directly. Successful completion of this project also has the potential to catalyze intervention research for addressing ARA inequities for SGMY. Finally, our method can be transported to other populations and health topics, thereby more generally advancing prevention science and health equity.