Limitations of the present study and further research opportunities

opportunities

This study was focused exclusively on those studying at universities in Australia, with the Student Survey and Sexy Trivia trial taking place in a single university. This approach was chosen as it allowed the survey to be distributed to a random stratified sample of students through the university’s official channels in order to limit the level of self-selection and to help obtain the most representative cross section of the student population within that university. While sharing the survey through social media would have allowed more universities to be represented, it was likely that responses would have been slanted towards those who were already most engaged with sexual health. This would increase the likelihood of volunteer bias already known to exist in sexuality research (Wiederman, 1999) resulting in an overrepresentation of certain demographics. The approach used was clearly valuable, given that a key component of the findings was the need to attract audiences that are not currently engaged in sexual health, however further study will be needed to ascertain whether different university populations exhibit markedly different needs and react to Sexy Trivia in different ways. Considering the substantial differences present between the responses of domestic and international students and the disparity in previous sexual

health learning opportunities, it is likely that universities outside Australia will require different approaches and that further study will be needed to best cater to international students in Australia.

While the number of respondents to the Promotion Survey was considerably lower than the number of organisations contacted, it is difficult to estimate overall response rate as many of the organisations contacted may not have had suitable student leaders to pass the survey on to. However a good sampling of different universities was attained, with responses from 23 of the 39 universities present in Australia.

This thesis also focused on university organisations where discussion of sexual health was not seen as taboo. As the key aim of the project was to find ways to improve sexual health promotion in Australian universities, evaluating the successes and challenges of current approaches and potential areas of growth was the logical starting point. However employing a method that relied heavily on the assistance of official intermediaries (such as the management of residential accommodation) in order to access student leader perspectives would likely have limited the range of respondents. While a small number of student leaders were critical of their organisation’s approach to sexual health issues (or lack thereof), it is probable that the organisations with the most restrictive views on sexual health promotion were not represented in the results. As such, we must view with scepticism results such as the low percentage of student leaders listing “resistance from organisation” as a key challenge to the provision of sexual health promotion. Given the initial hesitancy to engage with a sex-related topic as described in section 3.4.2.1, further work on organisations where sexual health promotion is not welcome would require substantially different methods, but would be a valuable inclusion to the improvement of sexual health promotion in universities.

Another potential avenue for productive change in university sexual health promotion would be further research into how student leaders who are interested in sexual health issues can be best supported. These student leaders represent a significant opportunity to enhance the sexual health understanding of their peers, but currently lack the training and support necessary to run effective sexual health promotions.

There are obvious difficulties in asking a population what they would like to learn more about, given the possibility of a topic being unfamiliar yet highly relevant. As such, this study focused on topics where interest currently outstrips supply in order to demonstrate which topics could help to attract university students. Similarly, interest in a topic being significantly less than supply does not necessarily indicate that discussion of those topics should be reduced. For example, while event supply significantly exceeded higher-risk and lower-risk interest for the respectful relationships topic, it was still a high priority for these groups, being seen as one of the three most important topics for both. It is also possible that frequently covered topics such as condoms, consent and safe sex may be less likely to be chosen as respondents may assume any sexual health promotion would include them. Due to the fact that the peer educators who ran Sexy Trivia advertised it, but not the talk, as an event that could be attended without participating in the survey, direct comparisons of attendance between the two events in the trial were not possible. While turnout to Sexy Trivia was much higher than previous sexual health promotion events in those communities, further study is needed to confirm the attractiveness of Sexy Trivia compared with other options.

While this project was focused on promoting sexual health in universities, it is likely that the findings could be relevant to other highly stigmatised areas of health promotion, such as mental health issues. Further research on the effectiveness of socially focused events drawing on pre-existing social connections may be beneficial in examining these other areas.