Concerned Parents of America has a “sexual health quiz” up on their website — see how well you do in abstinence-only sex ed class.
A few of my favorite questions and “correct” answers:
QUESTION: What % of teens that practice abstinence from all sexual activity either contract an STD or become pregnant?
ANSWER: 0%. Think about it! If you abstain from all sexual activity then there is no chance that you will become pregnant and no chance that you will contract a disease through sexual transmission.
Because no abstinence-practicing teen is ever sexually assaulted or abused! And no abstinent teenager ever goes on to be a sexually active person in the future! Abstinence is magic!
QUESTION: Teens that have sex at an early age increase their risk of delinquency.
ANSWER: TRUE: An article published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence discussed its analysis of prior research centering on the age at which individuals experience sexual intercourse for the first time (e.g. “sexual debut”) compared to the rate of delinquent behaviors one year later. Their research indicated that earlier sexual debut increases the risks of participating in delinquent behavior one year after the debut.
Sex has also been known to make listen to rock n roll music.
QUESTION: What percentage of teens will acquire an STD before they reach 25 years-old?
ANSWER: 50%. In an article written by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), a panel of national experts assessed what is known about the number of STD cases in young Americans. Recent estimates show that nearly half of new STD cases are among people ages 15-24, even though these youth make up only a quarter of the sexually active population. Half of new HIV infections occur among youth ages 15-24. One out of two youth will acquire an STD before the age of 25.
Apparently one side effect of abstinence is losing the ability to do basic math. That should probably be included in the curriculum.
QUESTION: Condoms prevent the transmission of the most common STD’s.
ANSWER: FALSE: A U.S. Government study released reveals no proof that condoms prevent the transmission of the most common STDs, including gonorrhea, chlamydial infection, trichomoniasis, genital herpes, syphilis, chancroid, and HPV-associated diseases. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Health, Department of Health and Human Services.
And by “no proof” we actually mean “tons of proof.” Abstinence also apparently impairs one’s ability to read and comprehend factual information.
QUESTION: What percentage of teen women using contraception will be pregnant within 2 years of use?
ANSWER: 21%. Thirteen percent of women using reversible methods of contraceptives will experience contraceptive failure (e.g. pregnancy) in their first year of use and 8 percent in the second year of use.Contraceptive effectiveness also varies based on four socioeconomic factors: womens age, union status (e.g. married, cohabiting, not in a union), poverty status, and race or ethnicity. Of women younger than 18 years old, 21.1% experience an unintended pregnancy (contraceptive failure) in the first two years of use.
Abstinence Barbie sez, “Math is hard!”
“Because no abstinence-practicing teen is ever sexually assaulted or abused! And no abstinent teenager ever goes on to be a sexually active person in the future!”
And no abstinent teens acquire sexually-transmissible diseases by non-sexual means.
The really stupid thing is that you have “perfect use” and “imperfect use” stats for pretty much every contraceptive method out there. Inevitably, these idiots pick the “imperfect use” stats for every other method and then pad that out. Abstinence, on the other hand, gets an automatic assumption of perfect use and a no true Scotsman defense.
I couldn’t get past the second question you listed without my head doing that ‘splodey thing.
These folks do know that people who had their sexual debut at a young age were more likely to have been coerced or have a history of being sexually abused, yes? And that childhood sexual victimization is ALSO a risk factor for delinquency? This is beyond misinformation. It is victim blaming.
Math is hard!
Also, if you answer any one question “correctly”, you get a 100% score.
My favourite example to give to those (Christians) who talk about abstinence being a (the only) 100% method of contraception is the Virgin Mary, and see how they respond…
Wait a minute, half of all new STDs are contracted by people between the ages of 15 and 24, therefore 50% of teenagers will contract an STD? That doesn’t make any sense at all- and I’m not good at math.
That quiz is no fun, as soon as you realize the correct answer is always the worst one, regardless of how accurate it is, you sail through.. what a dud!
Wow! I couldn’t get through the whole quiz because after each question I kept getting more angry. These “facts” are just blatant lies and falsehoods. I am furious that this is what people want teenagers to learn. If they do not learn as teenagers they will enter adulthood completely unaware of the world around them. As an educator I am shocked an appalled.
I tried the first question before I read the post. I gagged on the “answer.”
Interesting how socioeconomic class affects the effectiveness of contraceptives. Contraceptives, especially condoms, are clearly able to distinguish between married genitalia and unmarried genitalia. They are particularly good at hymen detection, apparently. They seem to work less and less as a hymen becomes less and less intact (but only if you’re unmarried). Anyway, I conclude that contraceptives have inborn detectors to find jewelry on people’s fingers.
They didn’t teach me that in biology!
Can I use condoms as metal detectors at the beach now?
The journal article in question 2 is actually three years old (accepted in August 2006), so recent-ish. The actual conclusion of the article states:
In sum, it is important to keep in mind that sexual intercourse
is not always a “problem behavior” and it may even
have positive consequences for many youth who experience
it in the developmental unfolding of their lives. Our study
demonstrates, however, that the timing of sexual initiation
matters and that many adolescents are at heightened risk of
engaging in delinquent behavior if they experience sexual
debut that occurs earlier than the timing experienced by their
peers. It appears that early sexual debut is likely to occur before
most adolescents are developmentally prepared to deal
with the emotional and social consequences of initiating this
behavior. In addition, failure to prepare for any unintended
consequences of engaging in sexual intercourse (e.g., pregnancy,
transmission of sexually transmitted diseases) can
have developmental consequences that continue to play out
over the life course.
The authors note that “it is imperative for future research to examine the role of gender, race, and social class in affecting the timing of sexual debut and behaviors resulting from this life course transition.” They also only consider sexual debut as someone answering yes to the question of whether they had ever had intercourse. Seems to me the manner of the sexual initiation is important but overlooked in this study. Also, early is judged against school peers and not at a set chronological age.
Actually, the 3rd question, about the 50% of young people with STDs, is right. Sorta.
It’s technically 50% of sexually active young people will contract an STD by age 25. A pretty important clarification.
Another important clarification is that a lot of these young people get STDs because they’re taught about not having sex, instead of being taught how to keep themselves safe when they do eventually have sex. And a large number of people don’t get tested on a regular basis, so most of the time, STDs are spread by people who don’t know they have anything.
Thus the GYT campaign through the month of April. (GYT = Get Yourself Tested.) Planned Parenthood, MTV, & the Kaiser Family Foundation are teaming up to encourage everyone, especially all young people, to get tested. A lot of PP clinics are offering free or discounted testing for the month of April, and the GYT page offers a clinic locator to find the clinic nearest you.
Ok, done with my plug now.
I hate to say that the ab-only people are right, but….with that statistic, they kinda are.
I think abstinence-only contraceptive practices are foolish. Young men should be allowed to sow their oats, youknowwhatImean?
Huh. I haz a fail and I’m a family planning counselor. I guess their “facts” are different than mine.
“I hate to say that the ab-only people are right, but….with that statistic, they kinda are.”
Except that they achieve that rightness by actively contributing to the problem (and actively interfering with others’ attempts to address it) that they tout in order to reinforce their teaching.
Also, since when is everyone from 15-25 a ‘teenager’?
I loved the number of “post hoc, ergo propter hoc” logical fallacies in there (and the incredibly bad mathematics.
There was also plenty of proof that teens need fully comprehensive sex education (for example, if teens think they can’t get STDs from oral sex, then it means that nobody is bothering to teach them about how the transmission of STDs actually works).
“Abstinence, on the other hand, gets an automatic assumption of perfect use and a no true Scotsman defense.”
Well…it’s kind of like if everyone stopped driving cars, noone would get in car accidents. :)
i cannot resist commenting on their sloppy statistical analysis about sex at an early age “causing” delinquency. they say:
An article published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence discussed its analysis of prior research centering on the age at which individuals experience sexual intercourse for the first time (e.g. “sexual debut”) compared to the rate of delinquent behaviors one year later. Their research indicated that earlier sexual debut increases the risks of participating in delinquent behavior one year after the debut.
let’s be very clear here = the studies may have found that early sexual activity was correlated with delinquent behavior, but it is not possible to conclude that the early sex CAUSED the delinquency. a study drawing a causal relationship would have had to control for every other variable in their lives – socioeconomic status, abuse status, one/two parent family vs foster care, etc. all we can conclude from the study they discuss is that there was a correlation.
for a great example of correlated variables that have no conceivable causal connection, see this post with a chart of US highway fatalities vs tons of lemons imported from mexico. the chart seems to suggest that importing more lemons increases highway safety, which is clearly ridiculous.
“Because no abstinence-practicing teen is ever sexually assaulted or abused!”
And if they did, then they probably did something to deserve it!
Does that seriously say “sexual debut?” Great that the abstinence-only movement is conflating losing one’s virginity to entering high society.
Thanks to preying mantis for pointing out the fact that many so-called STDs are transmitted through non-sexual means. HPV for instance up to 20% of the time.
ThickRedGlasses,
To be fair, “sexual debut” is a term that’s often used by researchers in sociology and STI/abuse prevention. It’s not an invention of abstinence-only groups. I believe they call it The First Time You Made Baby Jesus Cry.
That first question made me want to scream. I guess they abstain from math class, too.
What constitutes “delinquent behavior”? Is it sexual activity? Because if it is, I can see how there might be a correlation between sexual activity and delinquency (at least in teens between the ages of 15 and 24). Seriously people, bound your terms– if you’re language isn’t tight, you can pretty much say anything and be correct (at the expense of saying something that’s also meaningless).
Really, does anyone know if there’s a formal, technical definition of “delinquency”? If so, are the Concerned Parents of America using it?
Yup, just choose the scariest answer and you score correctly! Most of problems in these questions, ie unintended pregnancy and STIs, can be prevented with proper use of contreceptives. Proper use comes from being taught about it. These people are flouting statistics about how poorly our teenagers are doing when it comes to sexual activity but they are only willing to tout the answer of “don’t do it and you will be safe forever”.
One of the questions about hormonal contraceptives not protecting a person from STIs is the truest question on the entire quiz. The misinformation comes from teens not knowing that hormonal contraceptives (HC) have never said they block STIs. HC have always been about preventing pregnancy.
Knowledge is power here and we need to arm our children with all the knowledge we can about all aspects of the world. We are doing them a great disservice if we blindfold them about sex growing up and then push them out into the world with no tools to help them in life. We teach our children arcane forms of math telling them they might need it one day but we don’t teach them anything about sex, which most people in the world participate in before they are out of the teen years.
eastsidekate:
i have no clue as to what their use-definition of “delinquent” is – its generally used to mean things like skipping school and bad grades and drinking, etc.
but in general, i think that if there is any actual causation, i think that they hav it *backward* – those teens who are “delinquent” (who skip school and hang with a bad crowd, etc) are first “delinquent” and THEN they start having sex. this is just anedotal, from mentoring many teen girls, but thats how it looks to me – that “premature sex” (by which i mean having sex before the individual is ready) seems to derive from other activities. actually, iirc, that was one of the moral panics some years ago – that “delinquent activities” would lead to sex.
#10 Jen: Actually, you might want to read over the text again. The study cited says “nearly half of new STD cases are among people ages 15-24″ but the abstinence-only folks are claiming that half of 15-24 year-olds will get an STD. The study tells us that 15-24 year-olds are more likely to get STDs than other age groups, but it says nothing about the rate of STD infection within that age bracket.
To use a ridiculous example, if there were only two new cases of STDs last year, and one was a 19 year-old and the other a 40 year-old, you could say half of new STD cases were among people age 15-24. You could most definitely not say that half of all people 15-24 have an STD.
Major logic fail on the part of the abs-only folk, but that’s hardly surprising given that their entire philosophy is based on fail.
Not quite. See, theres a problem with these kinds of statics. The pool isn’t people under the age of 25, or even sexually active people under the age of 25. The pool is really detected, reported STD cases in individuals who denied a previous history of STDs. So what that means is that 50% of the people who test positive for an STD in a situation where it is likely to be reported and who denied a previous history of infection were under the age of 25. Thats a small, non-representative sample.
The problem goes deeper, however. Just because 50% of your sample sees a given effect doesn’t mean 50% of the population sees that effect. What you would need to know is how many people under the age of 25 are in this country, how many of them are sexually active, and then the total number of new infections. That might give you a rough estimate of prevalence.
Ah, but wait! Theres more! The question is “What percentage of teens will acquire an STD before they reach 25 years-old?” But the actual sample cuts two years from the bottom of the definition of “teen” and ads six years to the top. Thats right, anyone who gets an STD in college is considered a teen for the purposes of this discussion. Actually, there are more years represented in the range that do not fall in the teenage years than do.
Still, we aren’t to the real gem here. The information has a citation. I assume that this is beause citations make things official, allow others to verify your claims, and discourage speakers from making wild accusations. Well, lets look at the citation, shall we? “Our Voices, Our Lives, Our Futures: Youth and Sexually Transmitted Diseases, School of Journalism and Mass Communication (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), February 2004, pp. 1-25. ” Theres something missing, something those of us who do a lot of academic research probably caught right away. Theres a title, a year, a page range…but wheres the publication, publisher, or author? Instead of that information theres the name of a School and University. A bit of google-fu brings up nothing, ditto on an EBSCO query. Wait a minute…..The citation is an undergrad’s term paper.
Awesome.
While using loose or unusual terminology is considered bad form out in the real world, in academia its part of the game. Thats doubly true in sociology and psychology research. The phrase is “operational definition” and what it really means is “we’re going to use this familiar term for something everyone recognizes and use it to describe this discrete phenomena with the hope no one notices.”
Oh my… German teachers, health educators etc. are complaining that our teens take less and less interest in safe sex educaton and that many of them don’t know all their facts, but I can’t imagine a German teenager even hesitating at any of those preposterous questions.
Things have to be pretty far gone in orer for anyone to believe this kind of crap.
I already found the first question ridicolous: according to them, 21% of women having sex with contraception will get pregnant within two years.
I would like them to explain how come I had 20+ happy years of sex with no pregnancy, and two pregnancies out of two months of condomless sex? Possibly because I had a comprehensive sex education?
“I already found the first question ridicolous: according to them, 21% of women having sex with contraception will get pregnant within two years.”
If you read the way they actually phrase the question and consider how many–quite potentially abstinent–women are on the pill for medicinal rather than contraceptive reasons, it’s quite possible they’re either trying to make the case that contraception will get you pregnant all by itself or that quite a bit more than 21% of fornicating-while-contracepting women will wind up pregnant.
I haven’t seen stats on it, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find the ratio of medical/contraception users particularly high amongst adolescent girls, when you’re more likely to have wildly irregular cycles, acne problems, or particularly severe menstrual symptoms that could be remedied by starting HBC.
Oh, Jesus. I just looked up the article they cite for those stats, because I got a bit suspicious of what counts as “reversible contraception,” never mind the actual incidence of regular sex amongst users thereof. “Reversible contraception” includes the rhythm method and pulling out.
So, as a sex educator on a college campus and a public health geek, I had to respond to a few comments. I am not defending these folks, but some of the research they cite does appear sound (and of course, some of it is complete bunk). I think their spin is horrible — 1 in 4 teens may indeed acquire an STD, but many STDs are curable if caught early! So, let’s encourage regular testing, safer sex, etc. instead of trying to instill shame and the fear of God in kids over sex. But, I’m preaching to the choir here.
Still, a few points:
- it is probably true that condoms don’t prevent the most common STDs. HPV and Herpes can be passed skin-to-skin — so a condom may reduce one’s risk, but not eliminate it. I think a strong argument can be made that this is one reason why HPV and Herpes are so common — because (a) there is no cure, and (b) they are passed skin-to-skin, so practicing safer sex may not reduce your risk significantly.
- Contraceptive effectiveness rates DO vary based on age, socioeconomic status, etc. In a laboratory, there will be no difference — but in the real world, not everyone uses contraception perfectly. That doesn’t mean that the contraceptive itself can detect a hymen or marital status! It suggests that those who are disenfranchised, unsupported, young, etc. may indeed be less likely to practice perfect medication adherence. (Speaking personally, I was AWFUL at taking the pill when i was 17.) Also, this doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s something wrong with teens, or poor folks, or whomever — just that some researcher has found a statistically significant association between whatever their measure of socioeconomic status was (likely a combo of income + education) and medication adherence. Have the concerned parents spun this the wrong way? Yes. That doesn’t necessarily mean the research is bad.
- According to the World Health Organization, the rhythm method (i.e., fertility tracking, natural family planning) and withdrawal (i.e., pulling out) are legitimate contraceptive methods. The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (one of the largest studies in the U.S.) measures both of those as contraceptive methods practiced by teens. They are not EFFECTIVE methods, but they are methods. Pulling out will REDUCE your risk of pregnancy somewhat, but not eliminate it. Do I recommend these methods to my clients? no. Do I acknowledge that they are better than nothing? Yes.
- Sexual Debut is a pretty common term in public health research, not anything coined by the religious right. Yes, it sounds weird — but you see it all the time. I did some data analysis looking at “contraceptive use at first sex” — also a weird thing to say. Pardon the jargon.
- I was particularly upset by the abstinence question that Jill cited, especially since recent studies indicate that teens who are virginity pledgers are much more likely to (a) engage in oral or anal sex, which carries STD risks, and (b) much more likely to get pregnant or acquire an STD when they do eventually engage in sex.
OK — I’m going to hop off my soapbox now. Hurrah for comprehensive, sex-positive sexual health education!!
Funny, last I checked, Herpes I was an STD and it’s a combination of my parents being very careful when they had cold sores and my immune system that I didn’t get it as a child, like most people with HSV I do.
I loved this one too:
“QUESTION: What percentage of teens will acquire an STD before they reach 25 years-old?
ANSWER: 50%. In an article written by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), a panel of national experts assessed what is known about the number of STD cases in young Americans. Recent estimates show that nearly half of new STD cases are among people ages 15-24, even though these youth make up only a quarter of the sexually active population. Half of new HIV infections occur among youth ages 15-24. One out of two youth will acquire an STD before the age of 25.”
Especially because in a prior question (#2), they stated that 1 in 4 teens have an STD. As you point out, the numbers don’t add up!
And regarding condoms and the lack of proof, Question 4 reads:
“Consistent condom use will eliminate the risk of HIV Transmission.
FALSE: A U.S. Government study released reported that even “consistent” condom use could not eliminate the risk of HIV transmission. Condoms provide only 85% protection against HIV/AIDS.”
85% is pretty high. If I could reduce my chance of something happening by that amount, I would think that is pretty good.
I can’t get the answer to question 7 to come up. It reads, “Out of all teen pregnancies, what percentage is unintended? ” and the possible answers are 38%, 20% and 10% I am blown away! This means that somewhere between 62-90% of teen pregnancies are planned. (I think there is nothing wrong with planned teen pregnancies, I am just a little surprised by the numbers and how this is supposed to encourage abstinence).
Weird logic.
William (Post 27) how did you find out it was an undergrad paper? Can you post a link?
“I can’t get the answer to question 7 to come up. It reads, “Out of all teen pregnancies, what percentage is unintended? ” and the possible answers are 38%, 20% and 10% I am blown away! This means that somewhere between 62-90% of teen pregnancies are planned.”
For a lot of those stats, “teen” includes 18- and 19-year-olds. Given that pregnancies amongst minors really aren’t that terribly common, I imagine planned pregnancies due to idiosyncratic things like degenerative medical conditions, reproductive abnormality, etc. would take on a disproportionate significance in the statistics for 17-and-unders.
Not to defend the abs only people, but it’s customary in social science research to cut off adolescence at 24. There’s been a trend to refer to the upper limits of that as “emerging adulthood”, but no one is doing anything that’s not common practice when they refer to adolescence ranging from 15-24. The reason why you see the range starting at 15 is because data (here, especially the nationally representative data generally used to talk about rates of STDs among adolescents) often doesn’t report on kids 14 and under. This data is 1) hard to get; and 2) often not generalizable because of the small sample size. You could argue that you don’t think this is the way to go about doing business, but I’d argue back that the dollar figure you’d have to attach to a study to get the kind of data you’d want (in a perfect world) would probably make you feel a little weak in the knees.
They’re still incredibly off base about most of what they say, but since they’re parroting scientific jargon, they at least get most of the jargon right. The numbers/statistics… those they mostly get wrong.
Also, when talking about what they mean by delinquency, etc. – The paper will tell you exactly what they used to derive that variable (i.e., what proxy variables were used to approximate that construct), and if they don’t, then they haven’t done a very good job. The problem is that scientific research loses a lot in the translation to mainstream media, for understandable reasons.
Its an inference. 25 pages is too long to be a pamphlet (but its right in the term-paper range), and the school its originating from doesn’t seem to be the kind of school that would be making a 25 page manual with a flowery name on how you’re going to get an STD. If it was a published paper there would be a proper citation because the rest of the citations were in order. That means we’re probably looking at unpublished work. If we’re looking at unpublished work that means we’re probably looking at work produced by someone known to the team citing it. The lack of an author’s name suggests that the person doesn’t want to be associated with their work or doesn’t want to be contacted. Aside from that, with the exception of a missing author’s name, the citation style fits with citing an unpublished paper. The fact that no references can be found in google that aren’t connected to he quiz seems to imply something similar.
But the quiz didn’t mention adolescence, it mentioned teens. The 15-24 range makes some sense for epidemiology and social sciences because it captures a specific developmental period pretty well (I’d argue that it probably starts and ends earlier now, but thats an academic argument). The problem is that the abs only camp is trying to claim that the data is one thing when it is not.
Aside from that, I have a pretty big problem with social science research in general. Standards are sloppy, bias is laughable, and the customary means of testing hypotheses through statistical analysis are so flawed they’re virtually useless. Even simple epidemiological stuff tends to be garbage because of leading questions and the need to rely on unreliable data (self reports, reports from highly biased sources, etc). The publish-or-perish mentality in the social sciences also leads to mountains of bad research being churned out at a break-neck pace and incredible incentives for fraud. The almost total lack of replication studies in the social sciences is also pretty damaging. I guess thats what you get when you try to convince yourself that applied philosophy is science.
“Contraceptive effectiveness also varies based on four socioeconomic factors”
WHAT?!? So condoms don’t work so well when you’re… poor? Really?
But… um… *logic circuits melt*
At William, 40. Condemning an entire field – actually, multiple fields – in one fell swoop? There are places where rigor isn’t as tight in most all of the sciences. Social science isn’t immune to that, but there are a number of procedures in place to help guard against it, as there are in all science. I’ll agree that the publish-or-perish mantra often isn’t helpful, but that’s not something specific to the social sciences. Further, I find the implications in your last paragraph, and particularly your last sentence, highly insulting. It’s off-topic, so I don’t want to disrupt the thread, but I also don’t see any need to let such vitriol stand completely unprotested.
At William, 40. Condemning an entire field – actually, multiple fields – in one fell swoop?
Full disclosure: I’m in the final stages of earing a Doctorate of Psychology and over the past few months I’ve been waist deep in psychology and sociology research. I worked in a social psych lab for two years as an undergrad. I’m also familiar with the hard sciences. The state of research in the social sciences is, from my experience, laughable at best and fraudulent at worst.
True, but in most sciences if your primary method of hypothesis testing is shown to be statistically worthless you find a new method, rather than enshrining it as the gold standard for seven decades and quietly ignoring every statistician who points out that P values don’t tell you what you claim they do. The problem in the social sciences is that you can’t get much in the way of external validity with the commonly used methods unless you have samples that are too large and heterogeneous to be feasible. You also have huge problems with internal validity because most of the measure rely on biased reporters. Finally you have serious construct validity because operational definitions rarely conform to reality. Those aren’t problems in some sectors or with some researchers, they are the nature of social science research.
Its meant to be insulting because its an insult, but I think it is important here. The problem with abstinence only education is that it seeks to present subjective opinion and theory as fact. At the bottom, thats the same problem in the social sciences. My primary ax to grind is in the field of psychology, but the problem is endemic. The social sciences, most of which used to fall under the banner of philosophy, have a desperate institutional desire to be more accepted and powerful in society (for psychology this translates to better insurance reimbursements). In order to do that, they have to somehow “prove” their opinions. When that is the point you start from, your science is always going to be flawed. AO education has the same basic problem.
I have to agree — on the whole — with William, however insulting it is to my fellow social scientists. I suspect I am more willing than he to deal with charts of aggregate data in my own field, which is history, without snarking than he is, but any time, again in my own or closely related fields, I get a an explanation of the regression run or the values of whatever variable – my eyes immediately glaze over because I am certain that whatever follows will be special pleading with bad numbers and worse generalizations. I believe that data sets we have to work with are simply not large enough, or consistent enough over time in any area where human beings create the categories and then fill them in themselves, for any serious number crunching.
I don’t hate data sets – I built a large data base for my own dissertation — and again, aggregate numbers can be very helpful in clarifying patterns and trends. But as the discussion here shows, even a statement that seems as though it must be a simple counting of all the examples in the bucket measured against the whole number of whatever was in the barrel, like ‘half of all sexually active teenagers will contract an STD’ – turns out to be a very tricky little number to unpack (anonymous student research aside!). Personally – were it in my work, I would go with the most solid number I could find, like, in year xx, yyyy sexually active adolescents reported contracting their first STD — and, possibly depending on my point, include the total number of sexually active adolescents (assuming such a number existed and point it out if it doesn’t) and the total number of adolescents in the population. At that point I might toss in a percentage based on the numbers I reported – but I might not, and instead let the gross numbers carry the weight of my point (which I assume I felt supported the larger argument about whatever – batshit AO activists, for example).
William (post 39) although the pamphlet (or what ever it is) http://ihc.unc.edu/ourvoicesreport.pdf does not list an author it does say “Please address comments and questions to the project’s principal investigator, JoanCates@unc.edu.” and when I searched for Joan Cates at Chapel Hill, NC: School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill she is listed as a lecturer http://www.jomc.unc.edu/lecturers so I am not entirely sure that it is an undergraduate paper. So either it is an undergraduate paper that this lecturer supports, or it seems to be her work. It is shocking, though. Perhaps we should write to her with our comments?
I was also reading through the pamphlet, and I noticed that it says in the introduction:
“Silenced by stigma and lack of information, young people are one of the least likely groups in the nation to obtain STD diagnosis and treatment. As a result, they are highly vulnerable to lifelong consequences. Yet to the extent that youth do learn to prevent STDs and make healthy choices, the results benefit not only youth, but society at large and potentially future generations.”
So it sounds like the author of the pamphlet is not an advocate of information-withholding ab-only sex ed. She does mention discussing abstinence, but she also mentions discussing condoms and safer sex, so it is not clear what the author believes.