Sex Abstinence Study (no, not ME… a bunch of teenagers)

A large-scale, dedade-long study of abstinence programs in the U.S. has released its final report. The popular press has gotten the main findings right: the programs don’t seem to have any impact on teen sexual behavior. But there are some other interesting things, too:

• There is no negative impact of these abstinence programs (previous, smaller-scale studies had sometimes found that abstinence programs increased rates of unprotected sex).
• Some programs were more effective than others, but the front-runner only reduced sexual behavior by 5%. The overall finding is an average of the effects of all programs.
• These programs significantly increased teens’ knowledge of safe sex and STDs.
• The teens still didn’t know enough about the above two topics (e.g., many of them thought condoms were largely ineffective against all STDs).
• The teens’ behavior was most definitely not in line with their knowledge (e.g., most correctly reported basic knowledge of the dangers of unprotected sex, but many still had unprotected sex).

So… Teens are teens, it looks like. Smart, impulsive, horny, and they still don’t think it could happen to them.

As I was saying to my hapless soapbox audience (Alex), there is more to the story of abstinence education. For example, other studies show that certain populations (such as Muslims, Mormons, Amish, or certain conservative mainstream Christian groups) do have significantly reduced rates of sexual behavior (also drinking, smoking, drugs, teen depression, teen suicide, behavior problems, etc.). But these are not school programs. These are entire belief systems. In some cases, they’re full social ecosystems.

The authors of the Mathematica study note that teen peer influence accounts for a lot of the results. Kids just do what their friends (and enemies) do. We already know this. At the peak of conformity pressure, it takes positively huge influence to get an adolescent to stand against the tide of her or his peers. The above evidence suggests that home and community support for healthy attitudes can sometimes provide that kind of influence.

So maybe what all these abstinence or other sex ed programs have really shown is that school programs, no matter how intensive, are not strong enough to reverse trends in teenage sexuality. And they’re not going to provide support against peer conformity pressures the way that fifteen cumulative years of home and community support would.