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Adolescents (10-19 years) are a big segment of the Nigerian population, and they face serious risks to their health and well-being. Maternal mortality is very high in Nigeria, and rates of pregnancy and maternal deaths are high among female adolescents. Rates of HIV infection are rising among adolescents, gender violence and sexual abuse are common, and knowledge about sexual and reproductive health risks is low. Adolescent sexual and reproductive health (ASRH) indicators are worse in the north of the country.
In Bauchi State, northern Nigeria, the project will document the nature and extent of ASRH outcomes and risks, discuss the findings and codesign solutions with local stakeholders, and measure the short-term impact of the discussions and proposed solutions.
The participatory research project is a sequential mixed-methods codesign of a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial. Focus groups of local stakeholders (female and male adolescents, parents, traditional and religious leaders, service providers, and planners) will identify local priority ASRH concerns. The same stakeholder groups will map their knowledge of factors causing these concerns using the fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) technique. Findings from the maps and a scoping review will inform the contextualization of survey instruments to collect information about ASRH from female and male adolescents and parents in households and from local service providers. The survey will take place in 60 Bauchi communities. Adolescents will cocreate materials to share the findings from the maps and survey. In 30 communities, randomly allocated, the project will engage adolescents and other stakeholders in households, communities, and services to discuss the evidence and to design and implement culturally acceptable actions to improve ASRH. A follow-up survey in communities with and without the intervention will measure the short-term impact of these discussions and actions. We will also evaluate the intervention process and use narrative techniques to assess its impact qualitatively.
Focus groups to explore ASRH concerns of stakeholders began in October 2021. Baseline data collection in the household survey is expected to take place in mid-2022. The study was approved by the Bauchi State Health Research Ethics Committee, approval number NREC/03/11/19B/2021/03 (March 1, 2021), and by the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Institutional Review Board McGill University (September 13, 2021).
Evidence about factors related to ASRH outcomes in Nigeria and implementation and testing of a dialogic intervention to improve these outcomes will fill a gap in the literature. The project will document and test the effectiveness of a participatory approach to ASRH intervention research.
ISRCTN Registry ISRCTN18295275; https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN18295275
DERR1-10.2196/36060
Pregnancy and childbirth complications are the leading cause of death in girls aged 15 to 19 years in low- and middle-income countries [
One-fifth of Nigeria’s population are adolescents aged between 10 and 19 years, and the government recognizes the need to protect their sexual and reproductive health [
To protect adolescents, the Government of Nigeria introduced the Family Life and HIV Education program in schools in 2003. The program only reaches a small proportion of in-school adolescents, and teachers are uncomfortable dealing with the topics [
Small studies describe the knowledge and experiences of Nigerian adolescents of sexual and reproductive health risks [
This project aims to fill this evidence gap. In a participatory approach, we will collect qualitative and quantitative evidence about ASRH and share it with adolescents and other stakeholders, who will codesign interventions to improve ASRH. The work builds on an existing strong collaboration between the research team and the state government. This collaboration completed two projects in Bauchi State under the Innovating for Maternal and Child Health in Africa initiative [
The project considers influences on the sexual and reproductive health of adolescent girls and boys at individual, family, and broader structural levels [
Many risks for ASRH are structural; potential solutions need to address factors that constrain individual choice, including patriarchy and unhelpful gender norms [
The concept of
Codesign culturally appropriate interventions to improve ASRH and pilot their implementation in Bauchi State, Nigeria.
Explore priority stakeholder concerns about ASRH in Bauchi, collate the knowledge of female and male adolescents and other stakeholders about causes and protective factors for these concerns, and compare their knowledge with documented associations in the literature.
Quantify ASRH-related knowledge, attitudes, experiences, and behaviors of female and male adolescents, parents, and service providers, using data collection instruments informed by the collated local knowledge and literature review.
Engage adolescents, parents, service providers, and decision-makers in dialogue about the evidence on ASRH outcomes and causes, to identify and implement locally appropriate interventions at different levels to improve ASRH.
Evaluate the intervention process and measure impact on ASRH knowledge, attitudes, experiences, and behaviors of female and male adolescents and other stakeholders quantitatively and qualitatively.
The participatory research project is a sequential mixed-methods codesign of a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial. It will begin with qualitative data collection and a scoping review, supporting codesign of the dialogic intervention to share local findings about ASRH risks and codesign solutions with adolescents and other stakeholders. The impact evaluation of the intervention will use both quantitative and qualitative methods.
The study will take place in communities in the Toro Local Government Area of Bauchi State in the North East of Nigeria. Ninety-five percent of the state population are Muslim. Health and education indicators are worse than elsewhere in Nigeria. Only 26% of women and 48% of men aged 15 to 49 years are literate in Bauchi State, compared with 53% and 72% nationally [
Local researchers will facilitate focus group discussions with female and male adolescents and other stakeholders about priority concerns for ASRH. In each participating community, they will conduct 10 groups: 5 adolescent groups, 2 groups of parents of adolescents (male and female), 2 groups of traditional and religious leaders (male and female), and 1 group of service providers (mixed male and female). The adolescent groups will comprise 3 female groups (10-14 years, 15-19 years unmarried, and 15-19 years married) and 2 male groups (10-14 years and 15-19 years). All groups will include adolescents in and out of school. Female team members will facilitate female groups, and male team members will facilitate male groups. Young facilitators (less than 25 years) will facilitate the groups of adolescents. The 6 participating communities will be 2 urban, 2 rural, and 2 rural-remote, spread across 6 wards in Toro Local Government Area. The research team will also conduct 2 groups with male and female ward-level leaders in each of the 6 wards, 1 group with government officers in the local government area, and 3 groups at the state level, with health planners, traditional and religious leaders, and nongovernment organizations (NGOs). In total, there will be 76 focus groups and 380 to 456 participants (5-6 per group).
An inductive thematic analysis will identify priority ASRH concerns [
Fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) is the graphic representation of knowledge about causality in a system [
Local fieldworkers will facilitate stakeholder groups to create maps of the factors they believe cause the priority ASRH concerns identified in the focus groups. The stakeholders will estimate the strength of each association in the map. They will use a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 representing the strongest association. The FCM groups will be the same as the focus groups.
We will digitize the maps using YEd software [
Systematic reviews have examined the effectiveness of interventions to improve ASRH, including in low- and middle-income countries [
The trial will begin with a baseline household survey in all study communities. Half the communities will participate in evidence-based dialogues to plan and implement local solutions to ASRH concerns. Normal health and other services will continue in all communities. A follow-up household survey in all communities will document the quantitative impact of the intervention on priority ASRH outcomes, and narratives of change will explore perceived experiences of the intervention.
The household sample for measurement of impact in intervention and control communities will comprise all adolescents and their parents in 100 households in each community. Eligible households will have at least one adolescent girl. We will adjust survey timing to ensure we reach in-school as well as out-of-school adolescents. No adolescent or parent who agrees to participate in the survey will be excluded. For the intervention, all adolescents, adults, service providers, and traditional and religious community leaders in the intervention communities will be eligible to participate in activities developed in each community after discussing the local evidence in dialogue groups.
We have developed the socializing evidence for participatory action (SEPA) approach over 25 years [
We will prepare summarized outputs from the transitive closure analysis of the cognitive maps [
SEPA will take place over 18 months, in years three and four. Local researchers and adolescents will share the findings about ASRH, including sharing the video docudramas, with groups in the 30 SEPA communities: adolescent girls, adolescent boys, male and female adults, community and religious leaders, and relevant service providers. The groups will plan and implement local actions to improve ASRH in their communities, engaging other adolescents and other stakeholders in these community actions. The research team will provide logistic and administrative support for the community groups and their actions. Research team members will visit the communities monthly to liaise with community leaders, document progress, and help to resolve challenges. Follow up will be virtual if necessary; we have successfully used cellular teleconferencing in Bauchi communities [
The process evaluation will consider implementation, mechanisms, and context [
The initial focus groups and FCM with adolescents and other stakeholders will inform the specific priority ASRH outcomes to be addressed and measured. The outcomes are likely to include sexually transmitted diseases, experience and perpetration of physical and sexual violence, emotional distress, and use and experience of health services. Intermediate outcomes will cover steps in the CASCADA sequence. Questionnaires administered to adolescents and parents in the baseline household survey and the follow-up household survey 18 to 24 months later will collect data to measure the outcomes.
Timeline of the project. SEPA: socializing evidence for participatory action.
The sample for the baseline and follow-up household survey will include 6000 adolescent girls and 4000 adolescent boys, plus 4000 mothers and 2500 fathers. The clinical trials simulator of Taylor and Bosch [
We will stratify the wards by size and proportion of urban communities, and an epidemiologist not involved in the fieldwork will randomly allocate (using a computer-generated random sequence) 3 of the 6 wards to receive the SEPA intervention. All the 30 study communities in the 3 SEPA wards will participate in SEPA. We do not expect any community to decline to participate; they all participated in and strongly valued our recent home visits program [
It is not possible to blind participating communities to the SEPA intervention. The dialogue groups and resulting community activities will be apparent and are intended to be. The interviewers for the household surveys will not be involved in supporting intervention activities. They may become aware of the intervention status of some communities when undertaking the follow-up survey; they will use a standard questionnaire in all communities, and there is no reason to believe they will conduct interviews differently in intervention and control communities.
The baseline survey will take place in year two of the project in 60 communities in the 6 wards of the Toro Local Government Area. In each community, a team of interviewers will cover a cluster of 100 households, recording questionnaire responses on android handsets using ODK software (Get ODK) [
The follow-up survey will cover the same 60 communities as the baseline survey, but not necessarily the same households.
ASRH questionnaires for adolescents and adults will draw on existing validated instruments [
A guide for institutional reviews of health facilities will gather information on available ASRH services in one clinic per community
A questionnaire for key informants and a community profile proforma will enquire about factors relevant to ASRH at the community level. Key informants will include traditional and religious leaders, headteachers, health facility heads, and social workers.
Bivariate and then multivariate analysis of responses to the baseline survey will examine associations between ASRH outcomes and potential determinants at individual, family, and community/services level, using the Mantel-Haenszel procedure [
To measure the impact of the intervention, we will compare the pre-specified ASRH outcomes at follow-up between adolescents in SEPA and non-SEPA wards and compare the change from baseline to follow-up between SEPA and non-SEPA wards. We will use generalized estimating equations to account for clustering (at ward and community levels), differences at baseline, known potential confounders, and any other community-level changes in the period [
Drawing on the most significant change technique [
In intervention communities, local researchers will identify a purposive sample of 60 storytellers, including at least 25 adolescent girls and 15 adolescent boys. The sample will include people likely to have had a range of different experiences depending on their age, gender, urban or rural residence, role in the community, and extent of involvement in SEPA. Fieldworkers will collect stories by taking notes as the storytellers speak, reading back the stories to them to check for accuracy.
A hybrid thematic analysis [
A project steering committee led by the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency and including relevant government bodies and the research team will meet twice-yearly for oversight and decision-making.
On 1 March 2021, the Bauchi State Health Research Ethics Committee approved the overall project (NREC/03/11/19B/2021/03). On 13 September 2021, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences Institutional Review Board at McGill University (A09-B51-21B) approved the initial qualitative phase of focus groups and FCM and will be asked to approve the baseline and follow-up survey and implementation of the intervention of evidence-based dialogues.
Local research supervisors will seek consent from community leaders to work in each community. Facilitators will seek oral informed consent from group participants and parental/guardian consent for participants under 18 years old. Facilitators will ask participants to respect each other’s confidentiality and stress that they should not share personal information in the group setting. For the household survey, interviewers will seek and record on the handset oral informed consent from all respondents. They will also seek parental consent for adolescents under 18 years old.
Parents or guardians will not be present during adolescent group activities or individual interviews. We will not record any names or identifying information alongside responses from individuals. Group reports will not identify individuals. Fieldworkers will conduct group sessions in a private location. They will not proceed with household interviews unless they can establish and maintain privacy. Data on the server are password protected; only designated research team members will have access.
Survey respondents, especially females, who disclose sensitive issues, like domestic violence, might face retribution if other household members hear of this. Ensuring privacy minimizes this risk. Discussing topics like experiencing violence or abuse might cause distress. Interviewers will carry details of local support services. Facilitators will refer any group participant who is disturbed by the discussion to pre-arranged support in the community.
Fieldworkers, particularly women, potentially face security threats. All fieldworkers will be from the local area. Each fieldwork team will include male members, part of whose role is to ensure the safety of their female colleagues. Government focal points in each ward will advise on any current security risks, and the teams will not visit insecure communities.
The Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency will convene meetings at state and zonal levels to discuss findings and policy implications with planners and decision-makers in government, NGOs, and development partners. In year three, the project will share findings from the FCM and baseline survey, and in year five, discuss the impact of the SEPA intervention.
Evidence about factors related to ASRH outcomes in Nigeria and how these might be improved will fill a gap in the literature. We will also publish articles about participatory methods and advances in their analysis, of interest beyond the field of ASRH research. We plan to publish at least five open access papers in peer-reviewed journals and present findings in two international conferences.
The mainly female research team will consolidate their skills in participatory methods and learn about recent advances. The senior team members will support junior members and knowledge users to analyze and present findings and write articles for publication. Officers from the State Ministry of Health and Primary Health Care Development Agency will work on the project and learn about participatory, qualitative methods and collecting reliable survey data. In year five, the research team will facilitate an analysis and interpretation workshop over 18 days for 20 women and men from the government and FOMWAN. Participants will practice analysis techniques using project data. The research team will support them in preparing articles for publication. Adolescents will design materials to share the evidence from FCM and the baseline survey, including video docudramas. We will help them to create videos and other materials, and they will build skills as they do so.
Focus groups exploring ASRH concerns of stakeholders began in October 2021. Baseline data collection in the household survey is expected to take place in mid-2022.
The project will demonstrate the feasibility of implementing ASRH interventions in a Muslim and conservative culture. It tests a participatory approach: adolescents and other stakeholders share their knowledge, codesign instruments to collect data about ASRH and share the findings, participate in evidence-informed dialogue, and codesign and implement culturally appropriate solutions.
Methodological innovations will have wider relevance. We will test FCM with adolescents and continue our advances in the analysis of these maps. We will refine our use of transitive closure to analyze shifts in intermediate outcomes after an intervention [
During the project, adolescents and other stakeholders will identify interventions at different levels, from individual to policy level, to improve ASRH in Bauchi, that can be implemented by adolescents, by communities, and by services. Some will be implemented and have a measurable impact during the project; others are long-term interventions, and measurement of their impact is beyond the scope of this project. The interventions will be specific to the culture of Bauchi, but the way we develop them with stakeholders could have much wider resonance. The project could pave the way for a full-scale randomized controlled trial of the participatory intervention across different contexts.
By training and working with planners and decision-makers, the project will support the adoption of evidence-based policies to improve ASRH in Bauchi. It will contribute to a culture of evidence-based planning of health services, building on previous work in the State by the research team.
Evidence about factors related to ASRH outcomes in Nigeria and implementation and testing of a dialogic intervention to improve these outcomes will fill a gap in the literature. The project will document and test the effectiveness of a participatory approach to ASRH intervention research.
Peer review report from the CIHR/ISRC (Canada) Project Grant Committee.
adolescent sexual and reproductive health
conscious knowledge, attitude, subjective norms, intention to change, agency to change, discussion of issues, and action to change
fuzzy cognitive mapping
Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria
nongovernment organization
socializing evidence for participatory action
This study is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (grant numbers P14-175355 and PJT-178066). The funding body had no role in the study design, and it will have no role in the collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of data, writing of the study report, and the decision to submit the study report for publication.
We thank colleagues in Bauchi, especially in the Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency and FOMWAN, for their support and constructive comments as we developed the project protocol.
AC designed the project and drafted the manuscript. YG, KO, RM, LB, UA, and CM contributed to the project design and reviewed the manuscript. NA codesigned the project and supported the drafting of the manuscript.
None declared.