1. Results from the first questionnaire – November 2014 One of first questions we asked pupils was about sexuality and how often they are attracted to others. The majority of girls and boys categorised themselves as heterosexual. Sixty pupils (7%) surveyed reported that they had had sex and the average age for their first time they had sexual intercourse was 13.7 years in the intervention and 14 years in the control group. Of those who reported ever having sex, the most common number of partners was one, however, 42% reported having more than one partner. Less than half of those who reported sexual activity (either in the intervention or control group) stated that they always used contraception (48%). Twenty-two pupils reported that they were unprotected in the last sexual encounter they’d had. They reported using a range of contraception types, the most common being condoms. Twenty-six (45%) reported that they had sex without using a condom at least once in the past six months. Feedback for schools taking part in the Jack Feasibility Trial Participating schools and pupils Eight post-primary schools in Northern Ireland were recruited, with four randomly assigned to the intervention group receiving the 4-week ‘If I Were Jack’ intervention, and three randomly assigned to the control group continuing with normal RSE practice. Participants completed a questionnaire at three time points; firstly at baseline in November 2014, then in June 2015 for the first follow-up, and again at the final follow-up in October 2015. Pupils in Year 11 (aged 14- 16) were the target population and 831 were recruited into the trial. The mean age was 14 years in both the intervention and control groups at baseline. Almost 48% were female and 52% were male. Overall, 420 pupils were randomly allocated to the intervention group and 411 to the control group. Thank you! We would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank you for agreeing to be a part of the ‘Jack Trial’. We really appreciate that taking part in research does take time, effort and classroom upheaval and want to acknowledge that all the schools and teachers involved were extremely patient and accommodating. Now that the data collection of the trial is complete, we are busy preparing reports and applications that will hopefully fund the next stage of the research. Rest assured that none of these reports will identify your school, teachers or students in any way. We have prepared this brief report to let you know about some of the findings from the ‘Jack Trial’. The results presented here refer to the entire sample recruited for Jack and are not specific to your school. The reason for this is because we assured all participants that there data would be kept confidential and that they would not be identifiable from any reports so individual school-level data will not be available. Questionnaire As part of the Jack trial, we asked young people to provide details of their sexual behaviours along with beliefs and attitudes towards unintended pregnancy. These data are highly sensitive for the participant. For the research team, electronic data collection methods were attractive as they offered an extra layer of security when handling sensitive information. For the ‘Jack trial’ we decided to offer schools the opportunity to self-select their preferred method (either electronic or traditional pen and paper). In the ‘Jack trial’, 37.5% of schools selected to use electronic methods but we were only able to use electronic methods in the baseline data collection, due to software problems. After that we reverted to using the paper questionnaire First follow up questionnaire – June 2015 At this stage, 697 pupils completed the questionnaire, which was timed to be approximately five months after the intervention group had completed the ‘If I Were Jack’ curriculum. At this point the mean age was 15 years in the intervention group and 14.9 years in the control group. Sixty six pupils reported having had sex at this time point (9.5% of respondents) which was slightly higher than was reported at baseline. The mean age that they first had sex was 13.7 in the intervention group and 13.4 in the control group. Forty five percent reported having had more than one sexual partner (3% higher than baseline). Fourteen percent reported that the last time that they had sex they did not use contraception and did not know if their partner was using any. Twenty percent reported that neither of them used contraception at time of last sex. Final follow up – October 2015 At this stage, 771 pupils completed the questionnaire, which was timed to be approximately nine months after the intervention group had completed the ‘If I Were Jack’ curriculum. At this point the mean age was 15.3 in both groups. Over 100 pupils reported that they have ever had sex (n=106,14%), 43% having had more than one partner. Three boys reported that they have gotten a girl pregnant before, and one girl reported that she had been pregnant before. We found a small difference in proportions reporting unprotected sex between the intervention and control groups. Conclusion We hope that this information has been useful and that it has highlighted some areas that you may wish to cover in your RSE lessons. Thank you very much for all your help with this study, it has been invaluable for us. Please, also, pass our best wishes on to the students who participated. We really value the effort they put in to completing all three questionnaires. For further information please contact Professor Maria Lohan, School of Nursing & Midwifery, Queen’s University Belfast: m.lohan@qub.ac.uk. More information on the project can be obtained at www.qub.ac.uk/IfIWereJack InterventionControl How often Protected Never Not very often About half the time Most of the time Always 5 (14.7%) 4 (11.8%) 3 (8.8%) 19 (55.9%) 3 (13%) 4 (17.4%) - 6 (26.1%) 10 (43.5%) Last Sex Contraception None for me, don’t know about partner None for either of us Yes 8 (22.9%) 5 (14.3%) 22 (62.9%) 3 (12%) 6 (24%) 16 (64%) Number of times you had sex without a condom in last 6 months Never Once Between 2 and 5 times Between 6 and 10 times Between 11 and 20 times More than 20 times 19 (57.6%) 4 (12.1%) 7 (21.2%) 2 (6.1%) 1 (3%) - 13 (52%) 5 (20%) 4 (16%) 2 (8%) - 1 (4%)