Background: In-person methods for collecting qualitative data from youth to inform intervention development traditionally involve focus groups, in-depth interviews and advisory boards (YABs). While these proven methodologies have strengths, youth engagement can be limited by structural barriers (e.g. lack of transportation, inconvenient timing) and reluctance to participate due to stigma or discomfort with group settings. As an increasing number of HIV prevention and care interventions are successfully delivered online, innovative approaches to youth engagement in virtual spaces can also be applied across the intervention lifespan to increase the quality and validity of formative data.
Description: We present unique technology-based methods employed to elicit participant feedback during the development of four HIV prevention and care interventions. In Tough Talks, an avatar-based intervention that utilizes natural language processing to increase HIV disclosure among young men who have sex with men (YMSM), an online comic book caption contest was launched to gather real-world HIV disclosure discussions. Winning entries were awarded prizes and participant dialogues are used to program avatar responses (Figure 1). In Test Rehearsal, an interactive mHealth intervention that uses virtual reality scenarios to educate YMSM about HIV self-testing, asynchronous online focus groups enumerated barriers and facilitators to HIV testing among youth. In iTech, a Youth Advisory Council, composed of YAB members from 6 diverse sites across the US, convenes monthly videoconferencing meetings to foster continuous youth engagement. Finally, in Love Lab and We Prevent, qualitative relationship histories were collected from youth via video-chat. Youth could create, annotate and change online relationship diaries under the guidance of an interviewer, to explore periods of risk and facilitate the development and targeting of couples-based interventions.
Lessons learned: Beyond facilitating intervention delivery, technology can serve as a platform for formative data collection, mitigating the limitations of in-person methods and increasing access to diverse and “hard-to-reach” youth. It is critical to ensure that platforms used to engage and communicate with youth are secure, easy to use, and function even in low-bandwidth settings.
Conclusions/Next steps: Innovations in communication technologies offer researchers viable and valuable means to collect formative data. Utilization of these methodological innovations may better position interventions to impact behavior among youth.


[Tough Talks Comic Book Disclosure Dialgogue Submission]