Promoting Comprehensive Sexuality Education in Pakistan Using a Cocreated Social Media Intervention: Development and Pilot Testing Study.

Background: Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) is a curriculum-based approach to learning and teaching about sexuality that focuses on the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social domains. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) CSE guideline emphasizes gender issues and is firmly rooted in a human rights-based approach to sexuality. A recent cross-sectional community readiness assessment in Islamabad, Pakistan, found that the community is at the denial or resistant stage when it comes to implementing school-based sexuality education. The reluctance was attributed to a lack of understanding and widespread misconceptions about CSE.

Objective: This study aims to use the cocreation process to develop, pilot, and evaluate an intervention based on community readiness level to respond to community resistance by introducing CSE content, its anticipated benefits, and addressing prevalent misconceptions through awareness and promotion content for digital social media platforms.

Methods: For the development of the intervention (audio-video content), focus group discussion sessions with key stakeholders were held. Two videos were created in partnership with social media influencers and subsequently shared on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. A comprehensive process and performance evaluation of the videos and intervention development phase was conducted to evaluate audience exposure, reach, engagement, demographics, retention, and in-depth insights. The videos were uploaded to social media platforms in June and July 2021, and the data used to assess their performance was obtained in February 2022.

Results: With a total reach (number of people who have contact with the videos) of 432,457 and 735,563 for the first and second videos, respectively, on all social media platforms, we concluded that social media platforms provide an opportunity to communicate, promote, and engage with important stakeholders to raise awareness and obtain support for CSE. According to the findings, the public is responsive to CSE promotion content developed for social media platforms, with a total engagement (the number of people who participate in creating, sharing, and using the content) of 11,578. The findings revealed that male viewers predominated across all social media platforms. Punjab province had the largest audience share on Instagram (51.9% for the first video, 52.7% for the second) and Facebook (44.3% for the first video and 48.4% for the second). YouTube had the highest audience retention, with viewers watching an average of 151 seconds (45%) of the first video and 163 seconds (38%) of the second. With a net sentiment score of 0.83 (minimum=-3, maximum=5), end-user participation was also positive, and audience feedback highlighted the reasons for positive and negative criticism.

Conclusions: To promote sexuality education in Pakistan, it is vital to overcome opposition through sensitizing the society, and digital social media platforms offer a unique, though underused, chance to do so through reliable influencer marketing.