Newsweek article and National Abstinence Education Association post are below this article from Associated Press.

AP News:

Success seen with experimental abstinence program

By LINDSEY TANNER, AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner, Ap Medical Writer – Mon Feb 1, 6:00 pm ET

CHICAGO – An experimental abstinence-only program without a moralistic tone can delay teens from having sex, a provocative study found.

Billed as the first rigorous research to show long-term success with an abstinence-only approach, the study differed from traditional programs that have lost federal and state support in recent years. The classes didn't preach saving sex until marriage or disparage condom use.

Instead, it involved assignments to help sixth- and seventh graders see the drawbacks to sexual activity at their age, including having them list the pros and cons themselves. Their cons far outnumbered the pros.

The students, mostly 12-year-olds, were assigned to one of four options: eight hour-long abstinence-only classes, safe-sex classes, classes incorporating both approaches; or classes in general healthy behavior, which served as a control group. Results for each class were compared with the control group.

Two years later, about one-third of abstinence-only students said they'd had sex since the classes ended, versus nearly half — about 49 percent — of the control group. Sexual activity rates in the other two groups didn't differ from the control group.

The study was released Monday in the February edition of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Critics of abstinence-only programs have long argued that most evidence shows they don't work. The new study challenges that, but even the authors say the results don't mean more comprehensive sex education should be ignored.

Advocacy groups favoring traditional abstinence-only programs praised the study and said it shows that the Obama administration's move away from funding these programs is misguided.

The administration has focused on programs proven to prevent teen pregnancy. But the study is unlikely to revive enthusiasm for a narrow abstinence approach, and an Archives editorial suggests that it shouldn't.

"No public policy should be based on the results of one study, nor should policy makers selectively use scientific literature to formulate a policy that meets preconceived ideologies," said the editorial by Dr. Frederick Rivara, the journal's editor, and Dr. Alain Joffe, an associate editor.

The abstinence-only program was based on social psychology theories about what motivates behavior. It encouraged abstinence as a way to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, although the researchers didn't collect data on those outcomes.

Psychologist John Jemmott III, the lead author, called the findings surprising given negative results in previous abstinence-only research. Jemmott said the single focus may have been better at encouraging abstinence than the other approaches in his study.

"The message was not mixed with any other messages," said Jemmott, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has long studied ways to reduce risky behavior among inner-city kids. He created the four programs for the study with his researcher-wife, Loretta Jemmott.

Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Program, praised the results and said she hopes they revive government interest in abstinence-only sex education.

When asked if the new study might shape the Obama administration's policy, White House spokesman Reid Cherlin said: "Our approach is to use science and evidence to fund what works, while leaving room for innovation and new thinking. We feel the policy we introduced at the beginning of the administration accomplishes that."

The study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and involved 662 black children in Philadelphia.

Monica Rodriguez of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, an advocacy group favoring comprehensive sex education, said the study doesn't mean other abstinence-only programs would work.

"It's unfair to compare this abstinence-only intervention to the typical abstinence-only-until-marriage program that young people in this country have been put through," she said. These typically portray sex and condom use in a more negative light, she said.

Rodriguez said the program studied might be one approach to try with younger children, but that it probably would be less successful with older, more sexually experienced teens.

Almost one-fourth of the teens studied said they'd already had sex at least once, similar to other studies of urban, mostly black middle school-aged kids.

The classes were taught at schools on weekends. Jemmott said the program might work better if it were taught during regular school hours by the students' regular teachers — an approach he hopes to examine in additional research.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100201/ap_on_he_me/us_med_abstinence_education

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Newsweek   Posted Wednesday, February 03, 2010 5:06 PM

The New Abstinence-Education Study Is Good News. So Why Are Liberals Freaking Out?

Sarah Kliff

The first peer-reviewed study to show abstinence education to be successful was published yesterday in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. And, to put it succinctly, the liberal blogosphere is not thrilled.

“According to this study, abstinence-only education might work,” quips one blogger at Feministing. “And the operative word here is might, as in, sometimes, maybe, coupled with other strategies or sometimes never.” The Guttmacher Institute does a thorough, point-by-point takedown of the study,  noting that it “essentially leaves intact the significant body of evidence showing that abstinence-only-until-marriage programming that met previous federal guidelines is ineffective.” And at AlterNet—well, you can basically figure out its take from the headline Why We Should Disregard a New Study Showing Abstinence Ed Works. The general meme circulating on liberal blogs has basically been: this study may indicate abstinence-only education worked in one instance, but it definitely does not vindicate Bush-era policies.

But here’s the thing: the study authors never claimed that they were out to do that. They never said they found a cure-all for teen pregnancy. And they weren't out to replicate the programs that proved so ineffective during the past eight years. Instead, the study authors looked at African-American middle-school students in the Northeast who enrolled in an abstinence-only program (no instruction on contraceptives) and were taught, sans moral or religious arguments, that they should delay sex until they were ready. Marriage was notably left out of it.

The students in this program were more likely to delay sex in the two years after the program, as opposed to those who enrolled in no program or those who were instructed in safe sex. The study says nothing about whether their program would have (or should have) received federal funding under Bush’s scheme, which required teaching “abstinence until marriage.” But lead study author John B. Jemmott, a well-respected sex-education researcher, was specific to caution against taking the study as a policy prescription, saying, “Policy should not be based on just one study, but an accumulation of empirical findings from several well-designed, well-executed studies.” 

And in the end, opponents of this study are pursuing a debate that does not even matter. With the teen-pregnancy rate now on the rise for the first time in a decade, is it really worth spending our time ruminating about whether a sex-education program would have received funding under now-defunct guidelines? Maybe we should be excited about the fact that we found another way to help prevent teen pregnancy. Perhaps we could encourage Obama to spend part of his $25 million fund for experimental programs to see if the results here could be replicated. The smartest reaction I came across was from Monica Rodriguez at SEICUS, an organization that supports comprehensive sex education. She told The Washington Post that "one of the things that's exciting about this study is that it says we have a new tool to add to our repertoire.” (AlterNet seems to get that, too—it now has a new article called "These Abstinence Program Aren't Those Abstinence Programs.")

The generally negative reaction from the left really gets at how incredibly polarized the sex-education debate has become, to the point where supporters of comprehensive sex education can barely mumble a word of praise for a successful program. Sex ed doesn't have to be a zero-sum game. But any word in favor of abstinence, the thinking seems to go, is a word against comprehensive sex education.  And when such evidence comes in, the immediate reaction is to attack, even when it makes a little more sense to celebrate the fact that we’re a little bit closer to understanding how to prevent teen pregnancy.

 end article

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thehumancondition/archive/2010/02/03/the-new-abstinence-education-study-is-good-news-so-why-are-liberals-freaking-out.aspx

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