"Challenging earlier findings, two studies from the Heritage Foundation reported yesterday that young people who took virginity pledges had lower rates of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases and engaged in fewer risky sexual behaviors.

...The authors of the new studies, Dr. Robert Rector, a senior research fellow in policy studies at the foundation, and Dr. Kirk A. Johnson, a senior policy analyst there, said their findings contradicted those published in March in The Journal of Adolescent Health by Dr. Peter Bearman, the chairman of the sociology department at Columbia University, and Hannah Brückner of Yale University. The earlier study found that a majority of teenagers who took the pledge did not live up to their promises and developed sexually transmitted diseases about the same rate as adolescents who had not made such pledges. It also found that the promise did tend to delay the start of intercourse by 18 months.

The new study, reported at a meeting in Arlington, Va., sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services, found that over all, adolescents who made virginity pledges were less likely to engage in any form of sexual activity. If those who made promises did become sexually active, their array of sexual behaviors was likely to be more restricted than those of adolescents who did not make a pledge, Dr. Rector's team said.

Those who made pledges were less likely to engage in vaginal intercourse, oral sex, anal sex and sex with a prostitute, and they were less likely to become prostitutes than were adolescents who did not take such a pledge, the Heritage team said."

(Source:  Lawrence K. Altman, "Studies Rebut Earlier Report on Pledges of Virginity," The New York Times, June 15, 2005.)

"Several discrepancies were immediately apparent. For starters, the Add Health data clearly reveal that virginity pledgers are less likely to engage in oral or anal sex when compared to non-pledgers. In addition, virginity pledgers who have become sexually active (engaged in vaginal, oral, or anal sex) are still less likely to engage in oral or anal sex when compared to sexually active non-pledgers. This lower level of risk behavior puts virginity pledgers at lower risk for sexually transmitted diseases relative to non-pledgers.

How do Bearman and Bruckner conclude the opposite? In a narrow sense, they do not. Although they strongly suggest that pledgers are more likely to engage in anal and oral sex, they never actually state that. In fact, they very carefully avoid making any clear statements about the sexual risk behaviors of pledgers and non-pledgers as a whole. Instead, they have culled through the Add Health sample looking for tiny sub-groups of pledgers with higher risk behaviors. They then describe the risk behaviors of these tiny groups and let the press infer that they are talking about pledgers in general.

The centerpiece of their argument about pledgers and heightened sexual risk activity is a small group of pledgers who engaged in anal sex without vaginal sex. This "risk group" consists of 21 persons out of a sample of 14,116. Bearman and Bruckner focus on this microscopic group while failing to inform their audience of the obvious and critical fact that pledgers as a whole are substantially less likely to engage in anal sex when compared to non-pledgers.

This tactic is akin to finding a small rocky island in the middle of the ocean, describing the island in detail without describing the surrounding ocean, and then suggesting that the ocean is dry and rocky. It is junk science."

(Source:  Robert Rector and Kirk A. Johnson, "Virginity Pledgers Have Lower STD Rates and Engage in Fewer Risky Sexual Behaviors," The Heritage Foundation, June 14, 2005; http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/wm762.cfm.  See also Robert Rector and Kirk A. Johnson, "Adolescent Virginity Pledges and Risky Sexual Behaviors," and "Adolescent Virginity Pledges, Condom Use, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Among Young Adults," http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/whitepaper06142005-2.cfm and http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/whitepaper06142005-1.cfm .)

In the decades since the sexual revolution swept the country with its message of anything-goes permissiveness, social scientists have assiduously investigated the attitudes and behaviors of adolescents carried along on the cultural tides.  But a team of scholars from Mississippi State University, the University of Missouri, and Arizona State University believes it is past time to re-focus the research agenda.  "Little attention," these scholars complain in a recent issue of The Journal of Adolescent Research, "has been paid to understanding adolescents who are resilient enough to remain abstinent in the face of often extreme peer pressure and media messages that make early sexual activity appear attractive and normal." 

To remedy this lacuna in the research, these scholars examine data collected from 568 adolescents who identified themselves as virgins when surveyed at 20 different Missouri schools in 1997 and who responded to a follow-up survey in 1999.  Their results clearly indicate that adolescent libido is not an uncontrollable force; indeed, their findings highlight the real restraining effects of parents, of personal conscience and commitments, and of religion.

When surveyed in 1999, the number of self-identified virgins in this group had dwindled to 422 (74 percent of the original group).  Surprisingly, the erstwhile virgins who had become sexually active by 1999 were just as likely to have expressed concerns in the original survey about the risk of pregnancy as their still-continent peers (84 percent compared to 80 percent).  Nor were the newly sexually active much less likely than their still-continent peers to have expressed fears in the original survey about the danger of AIDS (79 percent vs. 83 percent).  

Worries about parental disapproval of sexual involvement did run somewhat lower in 1997 among those who jettisoned their status as virgins during the next two years than among those retained that status during this period (48 percent versus 60 percent; p < 0.01). But a personal belief that it is "wrong to have sex before marriage" was a much stronger statistical predictor of virginal status than were worries about parental attitudes.  Such a personal belief was expressed only half as often in 1997 by the teens who were sexually experienced by 1999 as it was by the virginal teens who were still chaste in 1999 (31 percent versus 59 percent; p < 0.001).  Likewise, an intention of  "waiting until I get married" was endorsed only half as frequently in 1997 by the students who were sexually experienced by 1999 as it was by peers who retained their virginity during the next two years (32 percent versus 59 percent; p < 0.001).  Religious doctrines prohibiting pre-marital sexual activity were also mentioned significantly less often in 1997 by the teens who were sexually initiated by 1999 than they were by the peers who were still abstinent (27 percent versus 39 percent; p < 0.01).

Overall, the researchers see little evidence for "fear-based postponement" among continent adolescents.  In contrast, the researchers discern strong indications in their data that "having conservative values related to delaying sexual activity until marriage shows promise as a protective factor in delaying sexual activity."

Will such research findings prompt educators to begin inculcating conservative values in their students?  Or will they just continue to pass out contraceptives?