Here is another installment in AllGov’s series of ways in which the federal government spends money on dubious projects.

 

Location: University of Central Florida in Orlando

Cost: $434,800 (from the National Institute of Nursing Research, a division of the National Institutes of Health)

What is It: Creating a game using life-size avatars to teach Latina girls age 12-15 in Orlando how to resist the advances of boys. At the end of the two-year project, the researchers hope to create similar games for boys and other ethnic groups.

The Sell: Low-income Latinas have higher teen birth rates and higher rates of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases than white teens. The best time to teach girls abstinence is during middle school, and video games are a good method of teaching. The game is intended to be played in afterschool and youth outreach programs run by trained teachers and counselors.

The Reality: Although reducing teen pregnancy is an admirable goal, it is unclear whether a video game would have a significant impact and whether the forms of peer-pressure encountered by Orlando Latinas are appropriate to other ethnic groups and other parts of the country. The ultimate cost of distributing such a game nationwide is also not clear.

 

The project, which is scheduled to conclude in March 2012, is currently in the “Game Prototype Testing” phase. For those who are excited by this project and want to know more, the researchers will be appearing on a panel on July 12 at the 14th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction in Orlando.

-David Wallechinsky

 

Avatars to Help Young Latina Girls Say “No” (pages 10-13, UCF Nursing Magazine) (pdf)

Script Development and Interactive Performance for the Latina Project (by Jeff Wirth, Anne Norris, Charles E. Hughes, Dan Mapes, Ken Ingraham and J. Michael Moshell, University of Central Florida) (pdf)

Wasting Taxpayer Money: Let’s Eat Dead Goats (by David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

Wasting Taxpayer Money: Pittsburgh's North Shore Connector (by David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

$423,500 Government Grant to Study Why Men Don’t Like Condoms (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)