Family Fact: Faith and Inaction

Family Quote: Faith and Action

Family Research Abstract: Learning to Say No

While 65% of students who read the Bible or participated in Bible studies believe premarital sex is a sin [X42 (N=276)=34.59, p< .01], this belief is apparently not put into action. That is, "those who considered themselves highly religious were still practicing risky behaviors." In addition, "Religion seemed to have little or no association with the practice of risky sex, although intensity of the students' religious beliefs may have been a minor influence in decreasing risky sexual behaviors." 

(Source: Ruth Fierros-Gonzalez and Jeffrey M. Brown, "High Risk Behaviors in a Sample of Mexican-American College Students," Psychological Reports, vol. 90, no. 1 [February 2002], p. 117-130.) 

"Teens-particularly girls-with strong religious views are less likely to have sex than are less religious teens, largely because their religious views lead them to view the consequences of having sex negatively. According to a recent analysis of the NICHD-funded Add Health Survey, religion reduces the likelihood of adolescents engaging in early sex by shaping their attitudes and beliefs about sexual activity."

(Source: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health, "Strong Religious Views Decrease Teens' Likelihood of Having Sex," press release, April 2, 2003; http://www.nichd.nih.gov/new/releases/religious_views.cfm.)  

The kind of sex education parents typically want for their children is the kind that will teach them to abstain from sex until marriage. But many educational experts have viewed abstinence-based curricula with deep skepticism, arguing that hormone-driven adolescents need proven contraceptives, not dubious preachments. However, a study of Sex Can Wait, an abstinence-based curriculum now in use in some school districts, provides solid evidence that such a curriculum can actually change how teens think and act.

Conducted by researchers from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and Boise State University, this new study compares the attitudes and behaviors of upper elementary, middle-school, and high-school students being taught with the Sex Can Wait curriculum in fifteen school districts with the attitudes and behaviors of comparable age school students being taught with more-typical contraceptive-based curricula. Although this study detects no significant effects of using Sex Can Wait in changing sexual attitudes of upper-elementary and middle-school students, a very different picture emerges among high school students. Statistical analyses reveal "significant posttest differences between the Sex Can Wait group and the comparison group on [sexual] attitude and intent to remain abstinent" (p < .004 for sexual attitude and p < .001 for abstinence intent). The effect of Sex Can Wait in turning high school students toward more abstinent thinking is especially impressive given that "there was a substantial decrease in the intent to remain abstinent among students in the control group."

The authors regard the failure of the Sex Can Wait curriculum to change sexual attitudes of the younger students as "puzzling" and "problematic." But they assess the effects of this abstinence-based curriculum on the thinking of high-school students as "encouraging." When the researchers turn their attention to behavioral data showing how well pro-abstinence thinking actually translates into abstinent conduct, they see results they characterize as both "encouraging" and "a bit surprising." The high-school behavioral data indicate "differences between students in the Sex Can Wait and the control group regarding both changes in transition from virgin to nonvirgin status (sexual intercourse ever) and participation in sexual intercourse in the last month" (p < .0004 for virgin status; p < .0065 for sexual intercourse during the previous 30 days). Since they "did not expect there to be behavioral changes at any level" within the two-three months of the study, the researchers try to explain their findings. Perhaps, they conjecture, the unexpected change in behavior among high school students being taught using Sex Can Wait means that "students [were] receiving the right message (abstinence) at the right time (when they were actually faced with decisions about sex) to make a difference."