An Affirmative Coping Skills Intervention to Improve the Mental and Sexual Health of Sexual and Gender Minority Youth (Project Youth AFFIRM): Protocol for an Implementation Study
Craig, S. L., McInroy, L. B., Eaton, A. D., Iacono, G., Leung, V. W. Y., Austin, A., & Dobinson, C. (2019). Project Youth AFFIRM: Protocol for implementation of an affirmative coping skills intervention to improve the mental and sexual health of sexual and gender minority youth. JMIR Research Protocols, 8(6), e13462. http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/13462
Highlights
Background
Sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY) face increased risks to their well-being.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) interventions support clients by generating alternative ways of interpreting their problems and beliefs about themselves.
CBT, tailored to the experiences of SGMY, may help SGMY improve mood and coping skills by teaching them how to identify, challenge, and change maladaptive thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors.
Study Description
This study scaled up implementation and delivery of AFFIRM, an 8-session manualized group coping skills intervention to reduce sexual risk behaviors and psychosocial distress among SGMY
The intervention groups were hosted by collaborating community agency sites across Ontario, Canada
Participants were assessed at prewait, preintervention, postintervention, 6-month follow-up, and 12-month follow-up for sexual health self-efficacy and capacity, mental health indicators, internalized homophobia, stress appraisal, proactive and active coping, and hope
Key Findings
A complete research protocol of the AFFIRM scale-up and intervention is detailed
At time of publication, data collection was ongoing; the target sample is 300 participants
It is anticipated that analyses will use effect size estimates, paired sample t tests, and repeated measures linear mixed modeling in SPSS to test for pre- and postintervention differences
Descriptive analyses will summarize data and profile all variables, including internal consistency estimates
Distributional assumptions and univariate and multivariate normality of variables will be assessed
