PREVENTING HIV: A CD-ROM PROGRAM FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION

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This project will produce a series of four fully interactive CD- ROM programs designed to prevent the spread of HIV among adolescents with mild cognitive and/or developmental disabilities (DD). While adolescents with DD have the same civil and human rights as other youth, they are frequently ill-prepared to make good decisions about sexual activity. These programs will meet that need. Direct instruction (DI) teaching methods will be used to facilitate mastery learning of the decision-making and social skills necessary for DD students to make safer sexual choices. The program will promote: (a) choosing to abstain from sexual intercourse, (b) recognizing and responding to high-risk sexual situations, and (c) appropriately using barrier methods if the decision is made to become sexually active. Through an interactive process, users will observe, assess, and direct the behavior of on-screen models, and be able to view the consequences of unsafe sexual choices. The program will analyze the choices made by the user and will provide immediate feedback and error-specific remediation. Phase I of this project will produce and evaluate a prototype program, targeting high school males. In Phase II three additional programs targeting high school females and middle school males and females will be completed. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION The market for these CD-ROM products includes all agencies that provide educational or informational materials to adolescents and young adults regarding sexual behavior (e.g., middle and high school health clinics, special education services and classes, state, county, and city health departments and STD clinics, Planned Parenthood clinics.