NAEA - National Abstinence Education Association

Research Summary of

“Sexual abstinence only programs to prevent HIV infection in high income countries: systematic review”

Published in the British Medical Journal, July 2007
See http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/335/7613/248 for full study

Overview

The objective of the study was to assess the effects of sexual abstinence programs for HIV prevention among participants in high income countries, including the U.S. The study evaluated results from 13 studies comparing abstinence education to other forms of sex education or to no sex education at all.

Reported Findings

Compared with various controls, no program studied was found to have a beneficial effect on HIV infection rates, or on incidence of unprotected vaginal sex, number of partners, condom use, sexual initiation, incidence of pregnancy, or incidence of sexually transmitted infection.

Talking Points Summary

• This study contains several substantial limitations and does not represent the effectiveness of abstinence education as a whole. The authors themselves noted the following major limitations:
  
  
  1. The large diversity across programs prevented meta analysis* thus sweeping conclusions cannot be made.
     *A technique in which a number of previous studies are used to summarize the totality of evidence related to a particular issue.
     
     
  2. Missing and incomplete information in several areas made the evaluation of methodological and statistical quality of the studies difficult.
     
     
  3. This evaluation only included studies on programs that contained a specific HIV prevention lesson and excluded the rest.
     
     
• The study failed to include numerous peer-reviewed studies available showing that abstinence programs DO effectively delay the onset of initial sexual activity, convince many sexually active teens to stop having sex, and lead to fewer sex partners among those who remain sexually active. http://www.abstinenceassociation.org/docs/NAEA_Abstinence_Works_041207.pdf
  
  
• Only one of the 13 studies included in the review involved older teens, who are most at risk for sexual activity. The rest evaluated programs targeting 10- to 14-year-olds. Further, the program in this study consisted of only a single session.

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August 8, 2007