Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education is crucial for early young adolescents (11 to 14) for understanding puberty, promoting body positivity, reducing stigma and shame, and preparing for adulthood. Young adolescents’ SRH needs are one of the least explored public health research areas in Bangladesh due to the cultural sensitivity of the topic and the young age group.
However, anecdotal evidence shows that, in developing countries like Bangladesh, educators avoid teaching SRH chapters due to cultural sensitivity, creating a knowledge gap among students. In such a situation, a digitalised platform for SRH learning can be complementary to traditional classroom learning. However, it remains unknown whether parents will accept a digital platform for their early adolescent child (EAC), ages 11 to 14, to learn SRH topics.
Therefore, exploring the parents’ and early adolescents’ [EAs’] acceptability of a digital platform for SRH learning will inform the policy about the barriers and scopes of introducing a digital learning platform to enhance adolescents' SRH knowledge. The main objective of this study is to explore the parents’ and EAs’ acceptability of a digital platform for SRH learning. A total of 278 adolescents (139 boys and 139 girls) ages 11 to 14 will be randomly selected from 2 villages of Matlab. One household survey will be conducted to explore EACs’ and their parents’ (father or mother, based on availability) perception of SRH learning, preferred source of learning, and demand for digital learning using a semi-structured questionnaire. Then, these parents (father or mother, based on availability) will be invited for an orientation session introducing the developed digital SRH learning platform. After 3 weeks of the orientation session, a household survey will be conducted to explore parents’ acceptability of the platform, with reasons for acceptance or non-acceptance using a semi-structured questionnaire. During this survey, we will also interview the adolescents to know whether they could access the platform, the challenges to accessing the platform, how was their experience of SRH learning through the digital platform using a semi-structured questionnaire. The main outcome measures are the percentage of parents and EAs who accept the digital SRH learning platform.
