Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research

Project Overview

Me & You: Building Healthy Relationships is a classroom- and computer based healthy relationships curriculum for middle school students. It consists of thirteen 25-minute lessons: 5 classroom, 5 computer-only, and 3 classroom-computer hybrid. The curriculum integrates group-based classroom activities (e.g., role-plays, group discussion, and other skill-building activities) and computer-based activities, some of which are individually tailored. It also includes school training and parent-child take home activities. The curriculum was developed using intervention mapping, a framework for developing health education interventions using behavioral science theory and empirical evidence.

We conducted a group randomized trial to evaluate the Me & You curriculum. Ten middle schools from a large school district in Southeast Texas were randomly assigned to either intervention (N=5) or comparison conditions (N=5). 921 6th grade students were recruited into the study, of which 834 completed the baseline survey. Of students who completed the baseline survey, 778 (93.3%) completed FUP1 (post-intervention) and 730 completed FUP2 (87.5%) (one-year after baseline). Results from the main outcome analyses suggest that students who received Me & You reported more unfavorable norms towards the use of violence (for boys and girls), more negative attitudes about sexting, and increased conflict resolution skills (constructive). They were also less likely to report dating violence perpetration at one-year follow up. The manuscript is in preparation.