Keith nuttle wrote:

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.

As usual spun to make it appear the pledges don't work. Based on other
reports of the same study those who take the pledge are less likely to
have sex until average age of 21 compared to about age 17 for the
average American teen. To Quot CNN:


I believe the main point of the pledges was to prevent teenage
pregnancy, not stop sexual activity. I believe 21 is about the age of
the first marriage, so those who take the pledge are probably waiting
for their partner of their first marriage.


Trying to prevent teen pregnancies and the spread of STDs is a
worthwhile activity. Trying to put a stop to teen sexuality is an
exercise in futility and stupidity.