A recent study has thrown a new challenger into the ring of the sex education debate.
Researchers from the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing and the University of Waterloo recently published findings that might show, for the first time, that an abstinence-only education program delayed the onset of sexual activity in pre-adolescents.
The study was conducted with 662 12-year-old students from Philadelphia, who were divided into four different educational approaches: abstinence-only, condom-only, a combination program of both approaches and a control group that discussed health issues not related to sex.
After two years, only one-third of the abstinence-only group reported having engaged in sexual activity, as opposed to about one-half of the control group.
However, the specific abstinence-only program used by these researchers is the first of its kind.
According to the study’s lead author, Penn Med and Communication Professor John Jemmott, the researchers crafted an abstinence-only educational program that focused on behavioral changes. The program’s content was informed by context and beliefs observed during community focus groups.
Instead of promoting abstinence until marriage, the program encouraged its participants to reconsider the benefits of abstinence in the context of their career and personal goals.
Jemmott was critical of abstinence-only programs that focused on ineffectiveness of condoms. “Telling people that condoms don’t work isn’t motivating in getting them to practice abstinence,” he said.
While his abstinence-only program did not have condom use in its curriculum, Jemmott says that those teachers were encouraged to answer questions about condoms accurately should they arise.
Aware of the criticism that abstinence-only programs actually decreased condom use, the researchers also measured condom use among the abstinence-only participants. The study found that there was no difference between them and the control group, proving that abstinence-only dose not necessarily have an adverse effect on perceptions of condom use.
“If drug companies have to prove that their product is both effective and does not have adverse effects, why shouldn’t all interventions consider that as well? We need to address condoms in an unbiased way,” Jemmott said.
However, he did caution against using the results of this trial to promote all abstinence-only programs. He claims that this intervention’s success was based upon its reliance on behavioral change theories that had been proven effective in other types of interventions, such as drug abuse programs.
Jemmott acknowledged that a crucial limitation of this study is that its scope is too small to compare abstinence-only and condom-only educational approaches.
The study was published in the February issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
