Study Finds
'Virginity Pledges' Do Not Affect Likelihood Of
Premarital Sex, Reduce Contraception Use Teenagers who make
"virginity pledges" to remain abstinent until marriage are
just as likely as
teens who do not make such pledges to have premarital sex and
are
less likely to use
condoms and other birth control methods, according to a
study published in the January issue
of Pediatrics, the
Washington Post reports. Janet Rosenbaum of the
Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health and colleagues analyzed data from the federal
government's
National Longitudinal Study
of Adolescent Health, a survey that collected
detailed
information from a representative sample of 11,000 seventh through 12th grade
students in
1995, 1996 and 2001. According to the Post, the new study is the
first analysis of
the federal survey that used a more stringent method to account for teens'
attitudes toward
sex before taking virginity pledges and other factors that could
influence their behavior.
Rosenbaum and colleagues focused on 3,400 students in the
federal survey who said in 1995
that they had not had sex or taken a virginity
pledge. Of that group, researchers compared
289 students who took virginity pledges
in 1996, at an average age of about 17, with 645
similar students who did not take
pledges. Similarity was determined through an assessment
of about 100 variables,
including teens' and their parents' attitudes towards sex and their
perceptions of
their friends' attitudes toward sex and birth control. The study found that by
2001, 82%
of the students who pledged to remain abstinent until marriage had retracted
their
promises. There was no significant difference in the proportion of
students from both groups
who had engaged in any type of sexual activity, the age at
which they had sex for the first time
or their number of sexual partners. Overall,
more than half of both groups had engaged in
sexual activity; they had an average of
three sex partners; and they had had sex for the first
time by age 21, regardless of
whether they were married. There was no difference in the rate
of sexually
transmitted infections in the two groups, but students who took virginity pledges
and
later had sex were less likely than non-pledgers to use condoms or other forms of
birth
control. The study showed that 24% of students who pledged said that they
always used a
condom, compared with 34% of students who did not pledge, and
students who pledged
were about six percentage points less likely to use any form
of contraception.
|
