reACT♀: A Serious Game to Help Female STEM Students Manage Stress

Introduction: Female students and Ph.D. students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), often face gender discriminatory and unfair situations throughout their academic careers. These challenges can lead them to emotional distress and a sense of helplessness negatively impacting their mental health and their motivation to pursue STEM careers. This research aims to evaluate our serious game reACT♀ with two objectives: 1) assessing the efficacy of the intervention on female students' psychological well-being and 2) collecting usability and user experience feedback. Methods: The proposed behaviour change intervention adapts the World Health Organization’s Self-Help Plus stress management program, based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), delivering it through a digital serious game, reACT♀, designed for female STEM students and guided by a virtual avatar. The study is conducted in four phases: screening and pre-test assessments in the lab (Phase 1, T0), six weeks of independent use of reACT♀ (Phase 2), post-test evaluations to measure changes in psychological well-being and the user experience (Phase 3, T1), and a 3-month follow-up to test long term efficacy on psychological variables (Phase 4, T2). The present preliminary analysis includes 16 female students (M age = 24.38, SD = 2.70) who completed all four phases, including questionnaires in 0, T1, T2 and the serious game levels. Results: The General Health Questionnaire (χ2(2) = 9.87, p < .01) and the Perceived Stress Scale scores (χ2(2) = 25.13, p < .001) ecreased across T0, T1 and T2, indicating lasting improvements. The intervention also ignificantly enhanced active coping strategies and emotion regulation. Participants reported that the game was highly usable and engaging, suggesting that it effectively captured user interest. Discussion: reACT♀ shows promising potential in improving psychological well-being and stress management among female STEM students and Ph.D. students over time. Future research should include control groups and larger, more diverse samples to strengthen the validity of the results. Additionally, further improvements are needed in engagement patterns and technical functionality to optimize the overall experience, effectiveness and scalability of the serious game reACT♀.