(P28) Effectiveness of a metaverse-based intervention to improve condom use self-efficacy and safe sexual behavior among college students. Randomized controlled trial.

Background: College students are particularly vulnerable to STDs-HIV in Chile. Low condom use and risky behavior are factors that influence the incidence of STDs and HIV. Therefore, innovative and effective interventions are needed for this population to improve safe sexual behavior and condom use.

Objective: The purpose of the study was to develop and evaluate a metaverse-based intervention (MBI) to improve condom use self-efficacy and safe sexual behavior among college students.

Materials and Methods: A single-blind, pretest-posttest, and parallel study was conducted on 83 college students enrolled in a private university in Santiago de Chile between March and October 2019 (ClinicalTrials.gov: #NCT03684668). In comparison to standard sex education, the experimental group received two sessions of metaverse-based intervention via Oculus Go virtual reality. The primary outcomes, condom use self-efficacy and sexual safe behaviors, and the secondary outcome, satisfaction with the use of MBI, were collected through surveys at a 1-month follow-up.

Results: A total of 152 college students were screened, and 83 were randomized. The average age of participants was 21.1, and most of the participants were female (77.7%). Regarding the effect of the intervention on the primary outcomes, we found significant improvement in the SSB scores at one month in the intervention group -5.743 (95%CI -9.054, -4.395) p< 0.005, but we did not find significant changes in CUSE scores 1.464 (95%CI -0.799, 5.244) p=0.147 (Table 3). Finally, the percentage of college students with excellent satisfaction with MBI was high (51.7% of students were satisfied, and 48.3% were very satisfied).

Conclusion: This study provides evidence that MBI increases safe sexual behavior in a group of Chilean college students. MBI is feasible to administer, highly acceptable, and can promote several aspects of sexual health. However, it was ineffective on condom use self-efficacy, future research should apply this intervention to a more demographically diverse population of college students and attempt to maximize the intervention effect size on condom use. Although MBI was not effective for condom use, this new technology might find application in motivating college students to engage in healthy sexual behaviors to prevent STDs and HIV.