The Role of Digital Sexual Communication in the Sexual Health of Forcibly Displaced Adolescents Living in Informal Urban Settlements of Kampala Uganda
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This three-paper dissertation explores the importance of digital sexual communications (DSC) for the advancement of sexual health among forcibly displaced adolescents living in the informal urban settlements of Kampala, Uganda. The first paper examined the prevalence of different patterns of sexting, a DSC strategy that involves sending and receiving sexually explicit materials via digital technologies and their association with technology use, gender norms, and sexual health factors. Results from this paper indicate that there are three-groups of sexters: “non-sexters”—individuals who did not engage in sexting (n = 205; 84.7%), “receivers, but reluctant senders”—individuals who received words-only texts and nudes, but only sent words-only texts in return (n = 13; 5.4%), and “poly-sexters”—individuals who sent and received both words-only texts and nude pictures (n = 24; 9.9%). Differences between sexting patterns emerged on technology use (mobile phone usage and mobile app usage), gender norms, and sexual health indicators (condom use, condom self-efficacy, and access to sexual and reproductive health services). The second paper adapted items from a subscale of Helweg-Larsen and Collins’ Multidimensional condom attitudes scale—embarrassment to negotiate and use—to incorporate sexting and tested the psychometric properties. The results indicate that the modified subscale is valid, reliable, gender-sensitive, and relevant for predicting recent condom use among urban forcibly displaced adolescents living in informal urban settlements in the Ugandan context. The third paper examined the mediating role of text-based condom negotiation in the relationship between predictors (sexting patterns, gender and dating relationship status) and condom practices (knowledge of where to access condoms, recent condom access, and recent condom use). Results indicate that text-based condom negotiation plays a mediating role between the predicting variables and condom practices. As a mediator, text-based condom negotiation was more critical in improving knowledge on where to access condoms for adolescent girls vs. adolescent boys and improving recent condom access for participants who engaged in sexting. Digital sexual health interventions tailored for forcibly displaced adolescents need to consider sexual empowerment, including negotiation, decision making, and assertive skills. The conclusion of the dissertation includes a summary of results, the unique contribution of papers, implications for social work practice, education, and research.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".