The initial findings from a one-year followup of 2,310 students participating in an evaluation of four abstinence-only education programs show that the programs increased support for abstinence.
The evidence on whether programs raised expectations to abstain is less clear. Because of the young age at which youth started participating in the programs, estimates of program impacts on sexual activity are not yet available but will be presented in the final evaluation report in 2006. The study is being conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., and its subcontractor, the University of Pennsylvania.
“There has been a great deal of speculation about the effectiveness of abstinence-only education, both pro and con,” says Christopher Trenholm, a senior researcher and project director for the study at Mathematica. “This study offers policymakers and the public the most solid empirical evidence to date on this important issue. By using scientifically rigorous evaluation methods, this report on first-year impacts offers highly credible estimates of the impacts of abstinence-only education on attitudes and perceptions that may be related to longer-term teen risk behaviors. A subsequent report using follow-up data three to five years after youth began in the programs will offer a similarly strong basis for conclusions about whether these programs change sexual behavior.”
Nationwide, more than 900 Title V, Section 510 programs receive up to $50 million in federal funding and an additional $37.5 million in state funding annually. The four programs studied for this report are 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. The first two programs serve middle schoolers; the latter two primarily serve elementary students - see program descriptions attached. These programs were chosen because they were well designed, stable, and offered services consistent with Title V, Section 510 guidelines, among other reasons.
“When the longer-term follow-up data are available, this study will be the largest and most rigorous evaluation of abstinence education programs ever conducted. It will be the first rigorous study of multi-year interventions, and it will be the only study that has tracked its sample members for as long as five years,” says Rebecca Maynard, University Trustee Chair Professor of Education and Social Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and co-principal investigator for the study.
Key Findings
Programs increased the level and changed the content of health, family life, and sex education. Programs also increased participants' perceived value of these services. For example, program youth were significantly more likely than their control group counterparts to report that the classes or programs they attended had raised their knowledge of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
Program youth were more likely to pledge abstinence. Youth in three of the four programs studied were significantly more likely than their control group counterparts to pledge to abstain from sex until marriage. The difference in pledge rates between youth in the program and control groups is particularly large for ReCapturing the Vision, which used pledging in its curriculum.
Programs increased support for abstinence . Program youth in three of the four programs reported having views more supportive of abstinence or less supportive of teen sex than did youth in the control group. Two of the four programs increased participants' perceptions of the negative consequences of teen and nonmarital sex.
Effects on expectations to abstain are not clear. The study's first-year followup examined expectations to abstain from sex in the two programs serving middle schoolers (My Choice My Future and ReCapturing the Vision). Youth in both programs reported higher expectations to remain abstinent than their control group counterparts. However, most differences are not statistically significant and could be due to chance.
Programs had no effects on other outcomes potentially related to teen risk behaviors . There is no evidence of program impacts on refusal skills or communication with parents. Likewise, there is little difference between the program and control groups in terms of their reported support for marriage, self-image, perceptions of peer pressure to have sex, or friends' support for abstinence.
Methodology