Although the United States spends about $88m (£44m; €65m) a year teaching teenagers to abstain from sex outside marriage, young people in the programmes are just as likely to have sex as those who don't receive counselling, a new study says.
Teenagers who received abstinence education did not delay sexual activity any longer than those in a control group. When they became sexually active they had the same number of partners and were as likely to use condoms or other contraceptives as those who had not been counselled.
Sharon Camp, president and chief executive officer of the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive issues, said, “This rigorous, well designed study adds to and confirms previous research findings that abstinence only education programmes are ineffective and a waste of taxpayer dollars.” She called for more comprehensive programmes that not only teach abstinence but also provide information on contraception and safe sex.
Federal funding of abstinence programmes was established by the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Individual states provide additional funding. The US has more than 700 programmes.
The programmes are required to teach that abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage and a mutually faithful monogamous marriage are the expected standard. They must also teach that abstinence is the only sure way to avoid pregnancy outside marriage, sexually transmitted diseases, and harmful psychological and social effects. The programmes must teach students how to reject sexual advances and how drug and alcohol use may make them vulnerable to sexual advances.
A study commissioned by the US Department of Health and Human Services and conducted by Mathematica Policy Research looked at 2507 teenagers from four groups representing urban and rural areas and different socioeconomic levels. The students were randomly assigned to a programme group that received abstinence education or to a control group that received the usual health, family life, and sex education services in their schools or communities.
Students were 11 or 12 years old when they began the programmes in 1999. The programmes lasted one to three years, and most were completed before the students entered high school.
The study followed them for four to six years, at which point their average age was 16.5 years.
About half of those who received abstinence education and half those who did not had begun sexual activity, both at about the age of 15. More than a third in each group had had two or more sexual partners. Nearly a quarter (23%) in each group reported always using a condom, while 17% in each used a condom sometimes and 4% in each never used one.
Barbara Devaney of Mathematica, a principal investigator, said that although the study showed that abstinence programmes did not delay sexual activity among teenagers, these teenagers were no more likely than those who hadn't received abstinence education to have unprotected sex when they began sexual activity.
Mathematica said its findings indicated that targeting children of this age group may not be enough. Peer support for abstinence erodes during adolescence, and promoting peer support at this time might be “an important feature” of future programmes, it said.
The report is available at www.mathematica-mpr.com.