Abstinence only education: no better, no worse
02 Sep 2008 04:59 pm
How can I say that birth control education doesn't work? my critics cry. Where's the data?
Here. [See below] The gold standard study of abstinence-only education is a longitudinal study begun in 2001. There was no significant difference between the students receiving abstinence education and the students receiving the ordinary programs in their school district. At least half of those programs had comprehensive contraception education.
It doesn't matter what you measure: STD awareness, assessment of birth control effectiveness, number of partners, age of first sexual intercourse, medical outcomes--there was simply no difference between the two groups. That indicates that children are not getting useful information either from abstinence-only programs or those focused on birth control.
You can find a more comprehensive list of the lack of contraceptive education effectiveness here. The upshot: some programs seem effective, but when you do metanalysis, you find that they're within the expected random variance.
This is less surprising than it sounds. In the 1950s, such programs undoubtedly would have been very effective. But these days, a kid who wants to get hold of birth control is very, very unlikely to be unaware where babies come from, or where they keep the birth control. Anyone who wants to know more can get on the web and Google it. Also, students pay as little attention to their teachers as possible. I remember in my extremely affluent high school being shocked by how little my classmates appeared to have retained from literally years of birth control-focused eduction.
Kids get pregnant because they have poor impulse control, hazy conceptions about the future, and possibly, parents who they are afraid will find birth control. None of these are problems that sex ed helps with. Moreover, as anyone who's ever been a Big Sister or similar can tell you, poor girls who have babies unfortunately too often do so because there's little reason not to, and they mistakenly believe that this will help them hold onto the baby's father. What they need is not more education about The Pill, but a better future to look forward to.
meganmcardle.theatlantic.com
Impacts of Four Abstinence Education Programs Press Contact: Robert Johnston, (703) 508-9848, rjohnston@commworksllc.com
A recent study of four abstinence education programs, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., finds that the programs had no effect on the sexual abstinence of youth. But it also finds that youth in these programs were no more likely to have unprotected sex, a concern that has been raised by some critics of these programs.
The study, conducted for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, was authorized by Congress in 1997 to evaluate the effectiveness of programs funded under Title V, Section 510 of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Nationwide, more than 700 Title V, Section 510 programs receive up to $50 million annually from the federal government in order to teach youth about abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage. Additional funding from state matching block grants brings annual spending for Title V, Section 510 sexual abstinence education programs to $87.5 million.
The study found that youth in the four evaluated programs were no more likely than youth not in the programs to have abstained from sex in the four to six years after they began participating in the study. Youth in both groups who reported having had sex also had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same average age.
Contrary to concerns raised by some critics of federal funding for abstinence education, however, youth in the abstinence education programs were no more likely to have engaged in unprotected sex than youth who did not participate in the programs.
“This is the first study of multi-year abstinence programs, and it is one of the few that has tracked its sample members for as long as six years,” notes Christopher Trenholm, the project director and a senior researcher at Mathematica. “The study finds that the sexual abstinence of students in four programs selected for the study was much the same as that of students who did not participate in these programs.”
“Some policymakers and health educators have criticized the Title V, Section 510 abstinence education programs, questioning whether the focus on abstinence puts teens at risk of having unprotected sex,” says Barbara Devaney, one of the study's principal investigators and vice president and director of Human Services Research at Mathematica. “The evaluation findings suggest that this is not the case. Participants in the abstinence education programs and nonparticipating youth had similar rates of unprotected sex at first intercourse and over the past 12 months.”
Looking Forward
The study findings highlight the challenges faced by programs aiming to reduce adolescent sexual activity. Two lessons are important for future programming in this area:
Targeting youth at young ages may not be sufficient. Most Title V, Section 510 abstinence education programs are implemented in upper elementary and middle schools and most are completed before youth enter high school. The findings from this study provide no evidence that abstinence programs implemented at these grades reduce sexual activity of youth during their high school years. However, the findings provide no information on the effects programs might have if they were implemented in high school or began at earlier ages but continued through high school.
Peer support for abstinence erodes during adolescence. Peer support for abstinence is a significant predictor of later sexual activity. Although the four abstinence programs had at most a small impact on this measure in the short term and no impact in the long term, this finding suggests that promoting support for abstinence among peer networks should be an important feature of future abstinence programs.
Methodology
The study used the most rigorous, scientifically based approach to measure the impacts of the programs. Much like a clinical trial in medicine, this approach compares outcomes for two statistically equivalent groups—a program group and a control group—created by random assignment (similar to a lottery). Youth in the program group were eligible to receive the abstinence education program services, while those in the control group were not, and received only the usual health, family life, and sex education services available in their schools and communities. When coupled with sufficiently large sample sizes, longitudinal surveys conducted by independent data collectors, and appropriate statistical methods, this design is able to produce highly credible estimates of the impacts of the programs being studied.
Youth were enrolled in the study sample over three consecutive school years, from fall 1999 through fall 2001, and randomly assigned within schools to either the program or the control group. The results in this report are based on a survey given to 2,057 youth in 2005 and 2006, roughly four to six years after they began participating in the study; 1,209 had participated in one of the Title V, Section 510 abstinence education programs and 848 had been assigned to the control group. By the time the last follow-up survey was completed, youth had entered their mid to late teens, permitting the researchers to reliably measure program impacts on teen sexual activity and other risk behaviors.
The four programs studied include My Choice, My Future! in Powhatan County, Virginia; ReCapturing the Vision in Miami, Florida; Teens in Control in Clarksdale, Mississippi; and Families United to Prevent Teen Pregnancy in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. These four programs were chosen because they had well implemented and replicable programs and were willing and able to take part in a rigorous evaluation.
More Information
The report, “Impacts of Four Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education Programs,” by Christopher Trenholm, Barbara Devaney, Ken Forston, Lisa Quay, Justin Wheeler, and Melissa Clark is available online at www.mathematica-mpr.com. For more information, contact Mathematica Publications at (609) 275-2350. For more information about the study, go to www.mathematica-mpr.com/welfare/abstinence.asp.
Members of the technical work group for the evaluation can also speak on behalf of the report and the overall study. Some of the available members include:
Sarah Brown, National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy: (202) 478-8500
Ron Haskins, Brookings Institution: (202) 797-6057
Kristin Moore, Child Trends: (202) 362-5580
Robert Rector, Heritage Foundation: (202) 608-6213
Mathematica, a nonpartisan research firm, conducts policy research and surveys for federal and state governments, foundations, and private-sector clients. The employee-owned company, with offices in Princeton, N.J., Washington, D.C., and Cambridge, Mass., has conducted some of the most important studies of education, health care, welfare, employment, nutrition, and early childhood policies and programs in the U.S. Mathematica strives to improve public well-being by bringing the highest standards of quality, objectivity, and excellence to bear on the provision of information collection and analysis to its clients.
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