Study: Many Teens Don't Keep Virginity Pledges - Pledgers are also less likely to use birth control.

[usregimechange]

MONDAY, Dec. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Teens who take virginity pledges are just as likely to have sex as teens who don't make such promises -- and they're less likely to practice safe sex to prevent disease or pregnancy, a new study finds.

"Previous studies found that pledgers were more likely to delay having sex than non-pledgers," said study author Janet E. Rosenbaum, a post doctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "I used the same data as previous studies but a different statistical method."

This method allowed Rosenbaum to compare those who had taken a virginity pledge with similar teens who hadn't taken a pledge but were likely to delay having sex, she said. She added that she didn't include teens who were unlikely to take a pledge.

"Virginity pledgers and similar non-pledgers don't differ in the rates of vaginal, oral or anal sex or any other sexual behavior," Rosenbaum said. "Strikingly, pledgers are less likely than similar non-pledgers to use condoms and also less likely to use any form of birth control."

The findings were published in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_73263.html


Yes, ignorance doesn't work. Please pass on to your local evangelical traditionalist.

[edbermac]

1. I'm sure the Palin family is just shocked at hearing this news.

:sarcasm:

[usregimechange]

2. Case in point.

[Initech]

3. Study conducted at the University of "DUH!!!!".

[TahitiNut]

4. Janet Rosenbaum seems to be competing for the 2008 KSOTO Award

(Keen Sense Of The Obvious)

[Loudmxr]

5. Like the ones who think smoking pot around the time you have sex wont get you preggers

We here in Burbank actually talk to our teens. And one of the recent discussions revealed this new/old urbank folk tale.

I laughed and asked "And, like, who believes this?"

"The stupid ones." group.."hahahahaha" "the pregnant ones".hahahahahaha

We also found out that very few knew where to get counseling even though the district provides it. We changed that quickly. B-)

[usregimechange]

6. Good for you.

[EFerrari]

7. This is another one of those stories that keep getting reported as if for the first time.

That's so weird.

[usregimechange]

8. How many will it take?

[EFerrari]

9. I don't have any teens around and no contact with them really, any more.

When my sons were around that age, their girl friends knew where all their resources were and had no problem talking to me about them. That was only in the early 90s but it seems like a different world ago. :shrug:

[usregimechange]

10. Just thinking about all those kiddos who do not have the appropriate information...

[Norrin Radd]

11. I posted this in a similar thread:

When I was a teen in the late 80's, my pledge to lose my virginity was also ineffective. And in most of my twenties, too.

[Igel]

12. But there's a question.

Rooted in the methodology.

"This method allowed Rosenbaum to compare those who had taken a virginity pledge with similar teens who hadn't taken a pledge but were likely to delay having sex, she said. She added that she didn't include teens who were unlikely to take a pledge."

In other words, she compared pledgers with a group of similar kids who were likely to delay having sex. Then she concludes that they're about as likely to have sex as other kids who are likely to delay having sex, but are less likely to use birth control.

But this raises a question, one that she doesn't answer or even ask. For that question, you'd need to look at a group of pledgers a while before they take the pledge and determine what their profile is. Is there one group of kids likely to delay having sex, and they eventually bifurcate into pledgers and non-pledgers? Or are pledgers really like the general population, or more like the general population of kids, but because of the (pre-)pledge process move into the delayed-sex group?

Those pushing pledging would say the latter. I think the study's author would say the former--but it's clear that it's an assumption built into the study, not a conclusion derived from a random sample. Without that information, we simply don't know how to interpret the birth control use rate, for obvious reasons.

Many people seem to be largely reading it as saying the pledgers are no different from the general population, which is an unsupportable reading.

[ColbertWatcher]

13. What a Tripp, huh? n/t