P31 Young people’s sexual wellbeing: developing a conceptual model using qualitative methods
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Adolescence is usually a period of normal and healthy sexuality development marked by experimentation and identity formation, but can also involve challenging experiences, particularly for sexual/gender minoritised young people. The concept of sexual wellbeing is useful in clarifying the links between sexuality and mental wellbeing, recognising that psychosocial issues like shame, stigma and trauma affect both sexuality and mental health. Sexual wellbeing demands focus beyond skills and competences to prevent risk of STIs and unintended pregnancy. Our conceptual model of young people’s sexual wellbeing takes a developmental perspective based on an existing model for adults which defines sexual wellbeing as ‘feeling safe, secure, respected, comfortable, and confident in relation to sexuality, and able to work through change, challenges, and negative past experiences’. It recognises that sexual wellbeing is influenced by environments, including family, peers, education, the health system, laws, and cultural values. Methods We conducted seven agenda-setting workshops with 28 young people aged 14 to 23 (mix of genders and sexual identities); 4 parents/carers; and 11 mental health researchers/practitioners. These workshops helped identify priority topics on links between adolescent sexuality and mental health. In March/April 2024 we will conduct six model-building workshops and 10 cognitive interviews with young people aged 14 to 19 years, to develop and refine a conceptual model and draft items for a corresponding measure. Results Agenda-setting workshops highlighted the following priorities among young people aged 14-23: body confidence; sexual pressures and expectations; confidence in own identities; access to community support; sexual shame; emotional impacts of first/previous experiences; expressing desires; and establishing boundaries. Our planned model-building workshops will uncover young people’s descriptions of ‘feeling good/feeling bad’ in the context of common developmental sexual experiences (e.g., from puberty, to exploring identity, learning about sex, exploratory activities, intended and unintended exposures to sexual content). Discussions will be structured around domains from an existing conceptual model for adults (rights and respect; self-esteem; comfort; safety; autonomy; self-efficacy; resources for support). In the final three workshops, we will co-produce a long-list of measure items to assess key issues. Ten cognitive interviews will probe comprehension, acceptability and appropriateness of terminology. We will present the draft model and highlight exemplar items. Conclusion The conceptual model and corresponding tools emerging from this integrated work with groups of young people is expected to contribute to a meaningful and dramatic shift in the ways that we understand sexual wellbeing, respectful of the many complexities that adolescents’ lives represent.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.043 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".