A serious-game for child sexual abuse prevention: An evaluation of orbit

Greater public and professional awareness of the extent and impact of child sexual abuse (CSA) has prompted the inclusions of prevention initiatives within school curricula. However CSA education is not always soundly grounded in empirical evidence, and evaluations of the impact of programs often inadequate.

This paper reports on a randomized-control trial of an empirically informed serious-game for CSA prevention, for children aged 8-10 years. The study also evaluates the impact on learning of complementary classroom lessons and part completion of the Orbit game.

The evaluation involved 139 students (female = 78; male = 61) aged 8-10 years (Mage = 9.64, SD = 0.33), from an elementary school in Queensland, Australia.

All children were pre-tested and post-tested (at 3 months) for knowledge of abuse prevention using the Children's Knowledge of Abuse Questionnaire-Revised (CKAQ-R-III), and a short form (SF) mapped to the learning objectives of Orbit . Children were assigned to one of three groups; i) play Orbit (n = 50); ii) play Orbit and CSA lessons (n = 55); and iii) control (n = 34).

Children in the Orbit play, and Orbit play and lesson groups, significantly (p < .001) increased their CKAQ SF scores, whereas those in the control group did not. Furthermore, those children who completed all of Orbit significantly (p < .001) increased their post-test CKAQ scores, whereas those who didn't complete the game did not.

This study shows the strength of a serious-games approach for school CSA prevention whilst reporting how child completion can impact learnings.