Rigorous Study Finds Abstinence Program Effective

'Positive intervention' differs from many such efforts.

A randomized-control study by well-respected researchers in the field of sex education has found that an abstinence program taught to African-American middle schoolers was more effective than other kinds of interventions in delaying sexual activity.

The findings differ from a number of previous studies that didn’t find evidence that abstinence-focused programs work. But the program studied differed from many abstinence efforts in its design, in that it did not stress remaining chaste until marriage.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, and the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, found in their study of 662 students in 6th and 7th grade that a third of participants in an abstinence program said they had sex in the two years following the program, compared with nearly half the participants in the control group. The abstinence program consisted of eight one-hour modules...