HAMILTON, June 14, 2002 (LSN.ca) – Two studies published in the current issue of the British Medical Journal have shown that sex education programmes are ineffective leaving out a ruling on other studies that have shown such programs harmful.
In one study, Canadian researchers looked a various sex education programmes and found that the programmes failed in all of their intended aims. “The interventions did not delay initiation of sexual intercourse in young women or young men; did not improve use of birth control at every intercourse or at last intercourse; and did not reduce pregnancy rates in young women.” A Scottish study examined a specially designed sex education program to determine if it could improve on the UK’s abysmal teen pregnancy rate. However, the study found that the new program did not fair better than the common sex education program. “When the intervention group was compared with the conventional sex education group in an intention to treat analysis there were no differences in sexual activity or sexual risk-taking by the age of 16 years,” reports the study. The study did find one arguably negative effect of the new program: “those in the intervention group reported less regret of first sexual intercourse with most recent partner.” The studies concluded that both abstinence only and regular sex-ed programs were ineffective. Organizers of abstinence programs are likely to question whether some slanting was involved in the studies in order to prevent abstinence programs appearing to be superior to the more politically correct but obviously failing sex-ed programs.
The full text of both studies are available from the journal at: https://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7351/1430 https://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7351/1426