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Article History

Received: 1 March 2022

Accepted: 21 March 2022

First Online: 11 April 2022

Declarations

:

: Ethical approval for the study has been obtained from the LSHTM Ethics Committee (reference 26411). Any member of the research/fieldwork team working with students without supervision by school staff will be required to have a full disclosure and barring services check. All work will be carried out in accordance with guidelines laid down by the Economic and Social Research Council, the Data Protection Act 1998 and GDPR.Head teachers as gatekeepers will be asked for informed consent for intervention and random allocation by the principal investigator. Parents will have a statutory right to withdraw their children from sex education lessons in intervention and control schools. In terms of research participation, as is normal within public health and educational research in secondary schools in the UK (e.g. RIPPLE trial), informed written opt-in consent will be sought from all research participants by trained fieldworkers, including students judged by teachers as competent to provide this. Parents will also be given the right to opt out their children if they wish. In all cases of data collection, participants (and, in the case of students, their parents also) will be given an information sheet 1 week before data collection and will be able to opt out (or, in the case of parents, can opt their children out) of this should they wish. Just before data collection, participants who have not previously opted or been opted out will receive an oral and written description of the study and the chance to ask questions of trained fieldworkers. In the eventuality of online surveys being conducted in schools not allowing face-to-face fieldwork, participants will receive the same information and have the same opportunity to ask questions of trained fieldworkers via telephone or internet technologies in real time. Participants will then be advised that participation is voluntary and they may withdraw at any point. All participants will be advised that they are free to withhold consent and this will not be communicated to others within the school or family. Students will then be asked for their written consent to participate by the fieldworker. In the eventuality of online surveys being conducted, students will be asked to consent via preliminary pages of the online survey. Students opting not to participate in research activities will continue with normal school activities.

: Not applicable

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.