Boater wrote:
Premarital Abstinence Pledges Ineffective, Study Finds
Teenagers Who Make Such Promises Are Just as Likely to Have Sex, and
Less Likely to Use Protection, the Data Indicate

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 29, 2008; A02

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely
to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are
significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth
control when they do, according to a study released today.

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more
than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of
whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the percentage who
took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was
10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any
sexual behavior," said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of
the journal Pediatrics. "But it does seem to make a difference in condom
use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."

The study is the latest in a series that have raised questions about
programs that focus on encouraging abstinence until marriage, including
those that specifically ask students to publicly declare their intention
to remain virgins. The new analysis, however, goes beyond earlier
analyses by focusing on teens who had similar values about sex and other
issues before they took a virginity pledge.

"Previous studies would compare a mixture of apples and oranges,"
Rosenbaum said. "I tried to pull out the apples and compare only the
apples to other apples."

The findings are reigniting the debate about the effectiveness of
abstinence-focused sexual education just as Congress and the new Obama
administration are about to reconsider the more than $176 million in
annual funding for such programs.

"This study again raises the issue of why the federal government is
continuing to invest in abstinence-only programs," said Sarah Brown of
the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "What
have we gained if we only encourage young people to delay sex until they
are older, but then when they do become sexually active -- and most do
well before marriage -- they don't protect themselves or their partners?"

James Wagoner of the advocacy group Advocates for Youth agreed: "The
Democratic Congress needs to get its head out of the sand and get real
about sex education in America."

Proponents of such programs, however, dismissed the study as flawed and
argued that programs that focus on abstinence go much further than
simply asking youths to make a one-time promise to remain virgins.

"It is remarkable that an author who employs rigorous research
methodology would then compromise those standards by making wild,
ideologically tainted and inaccurate analysis regarding the content of
abstinence education programs," said Valerie Huber of the National
Abstinence Education Association.

Rosenbaum analyzed data collected by the federal government's National
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which gathered detailed
information from a representative sample of about 11,000 students in
grades seven through 12 in 1995, 1996 and 2001.

Although researchers have analyzed data from that survey before to
examine abstinence education programs, the new study is the first to use
a more stringent method to account for other factors that could
influence the teens' behavior, such as their attitudes about sex before
they took the pledge.

Rosenbaum focused on about 3,400 students who had not had sex or taken a
virginity pledge in 1995. She compared 289 students who were 17 years
old on average in 1996, when they took a virginity pledge, with 645 who
did not take a pledge but were otherwise similar. She based that
judgment on about 100 variables, including their attitudes and their
parents' attitudes about sex and their perception of their friends'
attitudes about sex and birth control.

"This study came about because somebody who decides to take a virginity
pledge tends to be different from the average American teenager. The
pledgers tend to be more religious. They tend to be more conservative.
They tend to be less positive about sex. There are some striking
differences," Rosenbaum said. "So comparing pledgers to all non-pledgers
doesn't make a lot of sense."

By 2001, Rosenbaum found, 82 percent of those who had taken a pledge had
retracted their promises, and there was no significant difference in the
proportion of students in both groups who had engaged in any type of
sexual activity, including giving or receiving oral sex, vaginal
intercourse, the age at which they first had sex, or their number of
sexual partners. More than half of both groups had engaged in various
types of sexual activity, had an average of about three sexual partners
and had had sex for the first time by age 21 even if they were unmarried.

"It seems that pledgers aren't really internalizing the pledge,"
Rosenbaum said. "Participating in a program doesn't appear to be
motivating them to change their behavior. It seems like abstinence has
to come from an individual conviction rather than participating in a
program."

While there was no difference in the rate of sexually transmitted
diseases in the two groups, the percentage of students who reported
condom use was about 10 points lower for those who had taken the pledge,
and they were about 6 percentage points less likely to use any form of
contraception. For example, about 24 percent of those who had taken a
pledge said they always used a condom, compared with about 34 percent of
those who had not.

Rosenbaum attributed the difference to what youths learn about condoms
in abstinence-focused programs.

"There's been a lot of work that has found that teenagers who take part
in abstinence-only education have more negative views about condoms,"
she said. "They tend not to give accurate information about condoms and
birth control."

But Huber disputed that charge.

"Abstinence education programs provide accurate information on the level
of protection offered through the typical use of condoms and
contraception," she said. "Students understand that while condoms may
reduce the risk of infection and/or pregnancy, they do not remove the
risk."


snerk


I wonder if the governor of Alaska has talked about condoms with her
younger daughter.

Take it to another group.

Harry Krause
2015 Rosedale Lane

There's more. Should we continue, WAFA?