Disseminating Information on How to Teach Sex Education Online

Background: Expressing sexuality is a critical part of well-being but this can be particularly difficult for individuals autism spectrum. The impairments associated with autism are characterized by social communication deficits (Ozonoff, 2012); however, social communication is a key component of expressing human sexuality. Individuals on the spectrum may have difficulty learning informally, especially about social relationships (Stokes, Newton & Kaur, 2007; Realmuto & Ruble, 1999) which can cause struggles with understanding sexual humor, flirting, innuendo and conversations about sexual behavior. Despite the need for high quality sex education, youth on the autism spectrum rarely receive it (Curtiss & Ebata, 2013).

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to examine efforts to disseminate information on how to teach sex education to individuals on the autism spectrum. Specifically, the following four research questions were evaluated: (1) what search terms are used to look for sex education resources; (2) what social media sites elicited the most referrals; (3) what content was most frequently viewed; and (4) which links to external content were most clicked on?

Methods: Analytic data from the past five years from the website asdsexed.org was used to answer the research questions. Asdsexed.org is a website that provides resources for teaching human sexuality education to individuals on the autism spectrum and with developmental disabilities. It includes curricula, lists of resources, and tips for instruction. The analytic data was provided through Jetpack.

Results: In answer to research question one, the top five search terms were “masturbation training” (n = 76), “physical relationship stages” (n = 37), “relationship pyramid” (n = 34), “sexuality” (n = 28), and “relationship levels” (n = 27). In answer to research question two, the top referrers to the site were Facebook, Pinterest, Wordpress, Tumblr, and Twitter in that order. In answer to research question number three, the top five pages viewed on the site were “Privacy Social Stories” (n = 2,642), “Explaining Anatomy” (n = 1,913), “Relationship Pyramid” (n = 1,648), “Circles of Sexuality” (n = 1,611), and “High School Human Sexuality 101: Week 1” (n = 1,083). In answer to research question four, the top clicks on external content were for “Sexual Safety Social Stories” (n = 513), ASD sexed on Tumblr (n = 354), Advocates for Youth (n = 270), Vanderbilt’s Healthy Bodies Toolkit (n = 267), and “Dealing with Middle School Crushes” video (n = 165).

Conclusions: The search terms varied considerably and, with the exception of “relationship pyramid,” did not correlate directly with the top content pages. The search terms were dissimilar from the “tags” commonly used with posts and, generally, did not seem to indicate viewers looking for autism-specific content. Although Facebook was the top social media referrer, there was much more content posted to the Facebook page than the Pinterest page. This suggests that Pinterest posts have a higher yield of return compared to Facebook posts. Tumblr, although the lowest performing referrer, was commonly referred to from the website. This data provides insights into how sex education resources can be disseminated online.