The broad effectiveness of seventy-four field instances of abstinence-based programming

Abstract

Evaluations of a large federally funded sexual risk avoidance education (SRAE) efforts in the USA have not been widely reported in the wake of funding cuts. The purpose of this study is to report results from a broad set of programmes to demonstrate the breadth of field effectiveness of these programmes. Twenty-seven separate community-based SRAE programmes were evaluated from 2005 to 2010, comprising 74 separate evaluations and involving over 96,000 young people. Pre- to post-effect sizes on key attitudinal predictors of sexual activity were analysed using meta-analytic techniques, both individually and as an average composite score. The standardised change score effect size on the composite measure were small and statistically significant (d = 0.20, k = 75, p < 0.001), as were effects on individual measures (d = 0.15–0.31). Programmes using a single curriculum showed greater results than those using their own blend of two or more curricula. As a group, this large body of field implementations of SRAE appears to have produced modest but statistically significant effects on key predictors of sexual activity in youth.

Keywords:

• Abstinence education
• risk avoidance
• evaluation
• mediators
• meta-analysis
• USA

Acknowledgements

We thank the Institute for Research and Evaluation, Stan Weed, and the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families for providing funding and support to all the projects reported on here. We thank Matt Evans, Nicole Anderson and Irene Ericksen with the Institute for Research and Evaluation in Salt Lake City for the support provided in the conduct of the individual evaluations comprising this data-set and assisting with compiling the data-set. Thanks to the Foundation for Family Life, Cindy Crawford, and the Chicago School of Professional Psychology for supporting this project in various ways. Nicole Anderson is to be thanked for working in constructing data files. Thanks go to all the teachers, students and directors of the projects reported on in this paper too. Finally, we appreciate the helpful comments and collaborative tone of the journal editor and referees.