NEWS:Reviews of Contraception, the Board Game
(2005-06-25)

Review 1 Christina Silver

In a review of the game published in TAG Teacher in January 2002, researcher Christina Silver, whose work has surrounded teenage pregnancy and school-based sex education for a number of years, reviewed the game.

"Contraception - The Board Game" has been developed to provide information and promote discussion about sexual health and contraception in the classroom setting. Having played the game myself with friends, here is a brief overview of the game and some of my thoughts about how it could be used in SRE.

The Game
The game board and principles of the game are similar to Trivial Pursuit - the aim is for players to travel around the board collecting cards from the 6 ´resource centres´ - A&E, Pharmacy, Doctor, Family Planning/Young Persons Clinic, Condom Machine and GUM Clinic. These cards contain information about contraceptive advice and treatment which can be obtained from each resource centre, including freephone numbers and website addresses, and are designed to be taken away by players for future reference.

On their way around the board to the resource centres, players will land on one of 4 types of space - ´Safe´, ´Risk´, ´Question´, or ´Wait Here´. On landing on one of these spaces, players pick up the relevant card, read out the information or instruction, complete the task or activity or discuss the issue raised.

The Board also has a ´Choices Panel´ which is referred to as appropriate in light of the statements or scenarios on the ´Risk´ or ´Safe´ cards. The Choices relate to rights to be respected, treated as an equal partner etc. and the idea is to consider and discuss the most appropriate choice for the issue being discussed.

Additionally there are also 4 Board graphics - showing the Male and Female Reproductive Systems in Front and Side View. These simplified diagrams are designed to be used in discussion as a way of illustrating how different contraceptive methods work.

In the centre of the board is the ´card carousel´ which holds the ´condom demonstrator´ and several condoms.

Playing the Game
The Game can be played with up to 6 players. I played the game with 3 friends to see how it works and in general think it is quite an innovative and interactive idea in principle. Landing on the ´Questions´, ´Safe´ or ´Risk´ spaces is where most of the discussion and learning takes place, and the issues covered are comprehensive and do stimulate discussion.

We are, however, in our late 20s and did wonder how comfortable younger people would feel about discussing the issues, and particularly ´admitting´ to either not knowing, or indeed, knowing some of the answers. Obviously part of the idea behind the game is to break down these barriers and encourage students to feel able to discuss sexual health and contraception openly, honestly and with the minimum of embarrassment.

The game could probably most effectively be incorporated into SRE or PSHE as a kind of ´revision´ exercise rather than an actual learning tool. Below are examples of some of the questions and tasks:

Question Cards
´Name 4 types of contraceptive for which you need a doctor´s prescription or fitting.´
´How does the contraceptive pill work? Indicate on the Body, the parts which are changed by taking the pill.´
´Why do some women get pregnant when their partner is using a condom?´

Risk Cards
´You are too embarrassed to buy condoms from the chemist or shops; you decide to leave it up to your partner.´
´You are (your partner is) ´on the pill´. You have (she has) been very sick for a whole day. You carry (she carries on) on with the pills and sex without using another method. Read the ´if you miss a pill´ panel and go to the waiting room for the Family Planning Clinic.´
´You feel obliged to have sex because your partner has just paid for a night out. Choose one statement from the Choices Panel which might help you in this situation.´

Safe Cards
´You do not have a partner tonight but are going to a party and you feel safer carrying a condom.´
´Your/your partner´s condom has burst on a Friday night. You go to the nearest Brook Centre for Emergency Contraception because you know you have up to 72 hours in which to take the ´morning after pill´ and 5 days for an emergency IUD.´
´After sexual intercourse you carefully hold onto the condom as you withdraw your/your partner´s penis, to keep all the sperm in the condom. Using the condom demonstrator, put on and take off a condom.´

These examples illustrate the range of issues which may be discussed, and together with the Board Graphics, Choices Panel and the Condom Demonstrator there is certainly a large amount of scope for exploring not only the functional aspects of various forms of contraception, but also various (religious, ethnic, gender and age-specific) perspectives on the issues.
We played for over an hour, but had each only collected 3-4 Resource Centre cards. In the classroom setting, where there would be 6 players plus the facilitator, it seems unlikely that the game could be finished in one lesson....

In addition, we wondered what the rest of the class would be doing while 6 students and the teacher were playing...

The accompanying booklet is 60 pages long and contains a huge amount of information, including diagrams and photographs of contraceptive methods and suggestions for how the questions and statements may be discussed. Before using the game in the classroom, therefore, the facilitator would need to become familiar with Notes in order to be able to play the game to its full potential.

We came to the conclusion that the Contraception Game is a really good idea... It approaches the issues in an innovative way, it is fun to play and therefore has the potential to transfer information and skills and explore the issues in a way which students can relate to and enjoy.

Players take away the resource cards for future information. There are 6 cards for each Resource Centre Obviously, you could photocopy the cards and reuse them, but this isn´t really ideal. Giving out the real cards (which are credit-card size) is a good idea, and students could keep them easily in their wallets etc."


Review 2
In the February Edition of "Young People Now" the monthly magasine for people working with young people, Contraception is described and illustrated, although without the Safe, Risk and Question Cards or the Card Carousel. The objectives of the game, price and ordering via the Website are explained.
For full feature see February 2002. YPN. Page 33.

Review Three

UK Youth Summer 2002 (Page 34 pictured below) featured Contraception the Board Game in their resources section.

Review Four

Pat Jackson´s Review in The Community Practitioner, Journal of the Community Practitioners & Health Visitors Association (CPHVA)

Review Five
TES also made an independent review of Contraception the Board Game in January 2004

The mating game

Hilary Wilce
Published: 30 January 2004

A group of teenagers tell Hilary Wilce what they think about three new resources for sex and relationships education
There´s no doubt our teenagers are in a mess about sex. Teen pregnancies are the highest in Europe and rates of sexually transmitted diseases are rocketing. How are we going to get the message across that sex and relationships are things to be approached thoughtfully and responsibly? It would help if society at large weren´t such a value-free zone in this area, or if advertisers didn´t constantly use sex to sell. But since this is unlikely to change, schools and parents have to do the best they can.

A clutch of new resources is trying to help, and TES Teacher assembled a group of 15 and 16-year-olds to trial them. They thought all of them should be used by children younger than the ages suggested. "It has much more impact at about 11 or 12. By our age you´ve heard it all so often," said one veteran of PSHE lessons.

Even so, they were intrigued by Contraception: the Board Game, developed at Salford University and launched via a business enterprise two years ago.

The game can be played by up to six players, who move contraceptive-shaped counters (condom, pill, cap) around a board and who, depending on where they land, pick a card which can prompt a discussion on anything from missed pills, to boasting about sex or premature ejaculation. Barbara Hastings-Asatourian, director of community and learning disabilities nursing studies at Salford, based the game on health and social care research with the aim of increasing young people´s knowledge and getting them to think about choices.

The young testers found it all a little in-your-face at first. The board unfolds to show coloured diagrams of male and female sexual organs, and some of the cards prompted giggles - "Using the condom demonstrator, show your group of players how to put on and take off a condom safely."

They thought it might take a class a while to break through the embarrassment barrier but after that it would be a fun and useful way of learning practical things about contraception and discussing things such as how much risk you take if you sleep with someone you don´t know. "And you don´t have to look at people while you´re doing it," pointed out one. "You can just look at the board, and your cards and that would make it easier."

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