Evaluation of an Educational Program to Prevent Adolescent Pregnancy

The authors evaluated the effectiveness of a school-based sex education program in decreasing rates of sexual intercourse, improving birth control use, and decreasing the incidence of pregnancies among teenagers 16 years of age and younger. Twenty-one schools received either the McMaster Teen Progra...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health education & behavior 1997-06, Vol.24 (3), p.300-312
Main Authors: Mitchell-DiCenso, Alba, Thomas, B. Helen, Devlin, M. Corinne, Goldsmith, Charlie H., Willan, Andy, Singer, Joel, Marks, Susan, Watters, Derek, Hewson, Sheila
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adolescents
Biological and medical sciences
Birth Control
Celibacy
Child
Contraception
Contraceptive Agents
Control Groups
Curriculum
Female
General aspects
Humans
Male
Medical sciences
Ontario
Physical Education
Planification. Prevention (methods). Intervention. Evaluation
Pregnancy
Pregnancy in Adolescence
Premarital Sex
Prevention
Prevention and actions
Program Evaluation
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
Random Allocation
Schools
Sex Education
Sexual Behavior
Specific populations (family, woman, child, elderly...)
Teenage pregnancy
Teenagers
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Summary:The authors evaluated the effectiveness of a school-based sex education program in decreasing rates of sexual intercourse, improving birth control use, and decreasing the incidence of pregnancies among teenagers 16 years of age and younger. Twenty-one schools received either the McMaster Teen Program or the conventional didactic sex education program. Preprogram, the mean age of the students was 12.6 years. There were no statistically significant differences between groups in time to first sexual activity for males, X²(1) = 2.93, p = 0.09; time to first sexual activity for females, X²(1) = 0.50, p = 0.48; and time to first pregnancy, X²(1) = 1.90, p = 0.17. Significantly more experimental group males reported always using birth control at year 1 (difference 8.9%; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.4, 17.4). Limitations of the program that may have influenced the results were the exclusion of contraception information and its short duration.
ISSN:1090-1981
1552-6127
DOI:10.1177/109019819702400304