I'll post links from what was published today later, but for now:
- Reuters
- ABC TV in Columbus, OH: referrals to local experts. Take bets on whether they choose the statistician or the pediatrician.
- Sacramento radio KFBK: wanted me to go on this morning 2 hours after their call, but I was on a plane.
- Time magazine: Online Q and A to be published tomorrow.
- USA Today
- Family News in Focus
- Ellen Goodman
- WJZ TV Baltimore scheduled interview
- World Health News Today: will schedule interview
Ellen Goodman asked great questions, and was particularly interested by the phenomenon of "forgetting" the pledge, though she asked lots of questions.
USA Today had an immediate deadline for this morning, while I was on a plane, but perhaps later.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Virginity pledge paper expected media coverage
My virginity paper's embargo from the journal Pediatrics ends Monday morning, Dec. 29 and judging from the press I've spoken with, I expect coverage on some of the following:
- NBC's Today Show, Monday Dec. 29 ~7:30 am.
- Washington Post
- Bloomberg News
- health.com and maybe cnn.com
- Health News
- Maybe New Scientist of London
- British Medical Journal
- Baltimore Sun
- Chicago Tribune
Yay!
- NBC's Today Show, Monday Dec. 29 ~7:30 am.
- Washington Post
- Bloomberg News
- health.com and maybe cnn.com
- Health News
- Maybe New Scientist of London
- British Medical Journal
- Baltimore Sun
- Chicago Tribune
Yay!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Open letter to the virginity pledge creators
For my research, I got some useful information from the creators of the virginity pledge. I don't know if I am the only virginity pledge researcher to contact them, but they were extremely helpful and responsive to my requests for information. I have a great deal of sympathy for their goals to encourage abstinence, and I wanted to update them on the outcome of my research so that they heard it from me rather than from the media to maintain open relations.
I sent them the following note.
Dear Rev. Hester and Rev. Ross,
Thank you for your help with my virginity pledge research. My study is coming out on Dec. 29 in the journal Pediatrics and also received an award from the public policy association APPAM. The results are positive about the behavior of evangelical Christian teenagers, but not positive for the virginity pledge itself. I wanted to let you know a productive angle that you can take if you are asked about the study.
The year before taking the pledge, pledgers are more religiously and socially conservative than non-pledgers, and would be predicted to abstain more even without the pledge, so I compared pledgers only with similar non-pledgers rather than the American adolescent population as a whole. I found that pledgers and similar non-pledgers do not differ in sexual behavior, but unmarried virginity pledgers are less likely to use condoms and birth control. The difference in condom use may be because other studies have found abstinence programs present information that is not supported by scientific evidence and cause participants to have negative views of condom effectiveness. I use the same data as the original pledge studies, but an improved statistical method, so my results likely mean that the earlier studies' findings were due to the pre-existing differences between pledgers and non-pledgers rather than the pledge itself. My conclusion is that all adolescents should be taught accurate information about birth control and condom use. [The evidence indicates teaching birth control does not contradict an abstinence message; every well-designed study that I'm aware of has found that presenting birth control information does not affect students' sexual behavior, and in fact the only programs ever found in well-designed studies to cause teens to delay intimacy are programs that teach birth control.]
You do have two pieces of good news to report on the research, and I wanted to make sure you knew them.
1. The paper finds that the religious and conservative lifestyle of the both pledgers and similar non-pledgers includes much more conservative sexual behavior than the general American adolescent population. For example, they wait until an average of 21 to initiate sex as opposed to about 17 in the general population, although a majority do have premarital sex.
Quoting from the results section of the paper, "The pledgers and matched nonpledgers together are a highly religious group of adolescents and would be expected to be more sexually conservative. Pledgers and matched nonpledgers together reported substantially more conservative sexual behavior at wave 3 than the general population of adolescents --- with fewer reporting premarital vaginal sex, oral and anal sex, birth control and condom use, and multiple sex partners and more reporting being married --- but did not differ in 2 of the 3 STD tests: fewer had positive test results for Neisseria gonorrhoeae but did not differ in the proportion testing positive for Chlamydia trachomatis or Trichomonas vaginalis compared with the general adolescent population in Add Health wave 3 (data not shown)."
2. Earlier studies that found pledgers were substituting other sexual activities for intercourse are not upheld in this study. This study uses more rigorous statistical methodology than the previous studies, and finds no important difference in any sexual behavior.
Thanks again for your help. Like many researchers of adolescent health, I consider delaying intimacy as distinctly preferable to safer sex for teenagers for health and perhaps psychosocial reasons. It seems that the virginity pledge does not encourage teens to delay intimacy, but some abstinence-plus programs have been found effective in causing teens to delay and also teach the information that many of them need; hopefully such proven-effective programs can be adopted to be acceptable and appropriate for the wide range of traditional religious communities that comprise our country.
I hope you and your families have a happy Christmas.
Janet
--
Janet Rosenbaum, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
I sent them the following note.
Dear Rev. Hester and Rev. Ross,
Thank you for your help with my virginity pledge research. My study is coming out on Dec. 29 in the journal Pediatrics and also received an award from the public policy association APPAM. The results are positive about the behavior of evangelical Christian teenagers, but not positive for the virginity pledge itself. I wanted to let you know a productive angle that you can take if you are asked about the study.
The year before taking the pledge, pledgers are more religiously and socially conservative than non-pledgers, and would be predicted to abstain more even without the pledge, so I compared pledgers only with similar non-pledgers rather than the American adolescent population as a whole. I found that pledgers and similar non-pledgers do not differ in sexual behavior, but unmarried virginity pledgers are less likely to use condoms and birth control. The difference in condom use may be because other studies have found abstinence programs present information that is not supported by scientific evidence and cause participants to have negative views of condom effectiveness. I use the same data as the original pledge studies, but an improved statistical method, so my results likely mean that the earlier studies' findings were due to the pre-existing differences between pledgers and non-pledgers rather than the pledge itself. My conclusion is that all adolescents should be taught accurate information about birth control and condom use. [The evidence indicates teaching birth control does not contradict an abstinence message; every well-designed study that I'm aware of has found that presenting birth control information does not affect students' sexual behavior, and in fact the only programs ever found in well-designed studies to cause teens to delay intimacy are programs that teach birth control.]
You do have two pieces of good news to report on the research, and I wanted to make sure you knew them.
1. The paper finds that the religious and conservative lifestyle of the both pledgers and similar non-pledgers includes much more conservative sexual behavior than the general American adolescent population. For example, they wait until an average of 21 to initiate sex as opposed to about 17 in the general population, although a majority do have premarital sex.
Quoting from the results section of the paper, "The pledgers and matched nonpledgers together are a highly religious group of adolescents and would be expected to be more sexually conservative. Pledgers and matched nonpledgers together reported substantially more conservative sexual behavior at wave 3 than the general population of adolescents --- with fewer reporting premarital vaginal sex, oral and anal sex, birth control and condom use, and multiple sex partners and more reporting being married --- but did not differ in 2 of the 3 STD tests: fewer had positive test results for Neisseria gonorrhoeae but did not differ in the proportion testing positive for Chlamydia trachomatis or Trichomonas vaginalis compared with the general adolescent population in Add Health wave 3 (data not shown)."
2. Earlier studies that found pledgers were substituting other sexual activities for intercourse are not upheld in this study. This study uses more rigorous statistical methodology than the previous studies, and finds no important difference in any sexual behavior.
Thanks again for your help. Like many researchers of adolescent health, I consider delaying intimacy as distinctly preferable to safer sex for teenagers for health and perhaps psychosocial reasons. It seems that the virginity pledge does not encourage teens to delay intimacy, but some abstinence-plus programs have been found effective in causing teens to delay and also teach the information that many of them need; hopefully such proven-effective programs can be adopted to be acceptable and appropriate for the wide range of traditional religious communities that comprise our country.
I hope you and your families have a happy Christmas.
Janet
--
Janet Rosenbaum, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Friday, December 19, 2008
Condoms during oral sex: the hidden danger
Women inhales condom during fellatio
It's an old paper, but perhaps not well-publicized enough.
I can't really picture how this would happen.
Indian J Chest Dis Allied Sci. 2004 Jan-Mar;46(1):55-8.
Accidental condom inhalation.
Arya CL, Gupta R, Arora VK.
Jaswant Rai Speciality Hospital, Meerut, India.
A 27-year-old lady presented with persistent cough, sputum and fever for the preceding six months. Inspite of trials with antibiotics and anti-tuberculosis treatment for the preceeding four months, her symptoms did not improve. A subsequent chest radiograph showed non-homogeneous collapse-consolidation of right upper lobe. Videobronchoscopy revealed an inverted bag like structure in right upper lobe bronchus and rigid bronchoscopic removal with biopsy forceps confirmed the presence of a condom. Detailed retrospective history also confirmed accidental inhalation of the condom during fellatio.
It's an old paper, but perhaps not well-publicized enough.
I can't really picture how this would happen.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
"Imagine no religion" campaign
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has a new billboard campaign asking viewers to imagine no religion. They erected one billboard in the town with the headquarters of Focus on the Family, which I do find kind-of funny. Though funny in the same way that I find the abstinence billboards in neighborhoods with high teen birth rates.
The campaign has encouraged umpteen editorials with the standard secularist messianic thinking: fewer wars, no terrorism, no abstinence-only education, more title V family planning funding.
How about "Imagine No Extremists"? Not only would pragmatic compromise become easier, but perhaps there wouldn't be evangelical atheists and their billboards either.
The campaign has encouraged umpteen editorials with the standard secularist messianic thinking: fewer wars, no terrorism, no abstinence-only education, more title V family planning funding.
How about "Imagine No Extremists"? Not only would pragmatic compromise become easier, but perhaps there wouldn't be evangelical atheists and their billboards either.
Framing abstinence
People see issues differently depending on how they are framed.
This article looks at framing in the abstinence debate, specifically how using abstinence as the subject of a sentence instead of adolescents takes away adolescents' agency. That sounds abstruse, but it's an important difference both for advocates and sex educators (including abstinence educators.)
That is, saying "Abstinence is the only way to 100% prevent STDs and pregnancy." puts abstinence as the main idea, rather than adolescents, and makes the statement needlessly abstract. Adolescents thinking about having sex themselves would probably not feel any personal identification with that statement even while accepting the statement logically as a correct proposition.
Likewise, they don't use this example, but I think it applies equally: statements of "should" such as "Adolescents should wait to have sex." also take agency away and simultaneously add moralism, which is easy to tune out.
The article proposes using language that put adolescents back in the agency role, "Waiting to have sex..." or "Deciding not to have sex..." I like the statement with deciding best because it emphasizes the choice aspect.
I am not sure that framing would change efficacy of a curriculum, but the qualitative research from a couple months ago about adolescents' sexual decisions does indicate that the first two phrasings are probably ineffective, so it wouldn't hurt to try.
And there is no reason the abstinence movement couldn't adopt this wording. Everyone knows that adolescents have agency over their sexuality --- at the end of the abstinence program, they will be making decisions, not passively following rules. Adolescents who intend to be abstinent need to make decisions about intimacy, and in fact their decisions are more difficult if they want to be effective. Decisions have to include complete and accurate information which requires teaching birth control accurately.
There are certainly some sex-positive books written for young evangelical adults that emphasize their agency; one even says that sexuality is part of every social interaction ("Soul Virgins" written by two evangelical sex therapists, reviewed here earlier). I haven't seen any sex-positive literature for teenagers, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Many of the adolescent curricula that I have seen do talk about sexuality as a contaminating external force, and that's just not productive.
The abstinence movement has other models for sexuality, such as sexuality as altering relationship development, that while negative don't mark sexuality as bad, but just as out of place in an adolescent relationship, and do concur with the mainstream adolescent research. So many of my colleagues begin papers by citing the statistic that most adolescents who have had sex wish they'd waited and that younger people are more vulnerable to STDs. (This American Life even has a segment about how couples use sweet talk to avoid being in the moment and developing their relationship. And last night the Big Bang Theory featured a girlfriend using sex to avoid uncomfortable conversation.)
These models of sexuality require discussions about how to develop healthy and meaningful romantic relationships. That's more difficult to teach than moralism and threats, but has some chance of being effective.
This article looks at framing in the abstinence debate, specifically how using abstinence as the subject of a sentence instead of adolescents takes away adolescents' agency. That sounds abstruse, but it's an important difference both for advocates and sex educators (including abstinence educators.)
That is, saying "Abstinence is the only way to 100% prevent STDs and pregnancy." puts abstinence as the main idea, rather than adolescents, and makes the statement needlessly abstract. Adolescents thinking about having sex themselves would probably not feel any personal identification with that statement even while accepting the statement logically as a correct proposition.
Likewise, they don't use this example, but I think it applies equally: statements of "should" such as "Adolescents should wait to have sex." also take agency away and simultaneously add moralism, which is easy to tune out.
The article proposes using language that put adolescents back in the agency role, "Waiting to have sex..." or "Deciding not to have sex..." I like the statement with deciding best because it emphasizes the choice aspect.
I am not sure that framing would change efficacy of a curriculum, but the qualitative research from a couple months ago about adolescents' sexual decisions does indicate that the first two phrasings are probably ineffective, so it wouldn't hurt to try.
And there is no reason the abstinence movement couldn't adopt this wording. Everyone knows that adolescents have agency over their sexuality --- at the end of the abstinence program, they will be making decisions, not passively following rules. Adolescents who intend to be abstinent need to make decisions about intimacy, and in fact their decisions are more difficult if they want to be effective. Decisions have to include complete and accurate information which requires teaching birth control accurately.
There are certainly some sex-positive books written for young evangelical adults that emphasize their agency; one even says that sexuality is part of every social interaction ("Soul Virgins" written by two evangelical sex therapists, reviewed here earlier). I haven't seen any sex-positive literature for teenagers, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Many of the adolescent curricula that I have seen do talk about sexuality as a contaminating external force, and that's just not productive.
The abstinence movement has other models for sexuality, such as sexuality as altering relationship development, that while negative don't mark sexuality as bad, but just as out of place in an adolescent relationship, and do concur with the mainstream adolescent research. So many of my colleagues begin papers by citing the statistic that most adolescents who have had sex wish they'd waited and that younger people are more vulnerable to STDs. (This American Life even has a segment about how couples use sweet talk to avoid being in the moment and developing their relationship. And last night the Big Bang Theory featured a girlfriend using sex to avoid uncomfortable conversation.)
These models of sexuality require discussions about how to develop healthy and meaningful romantic relationships. That's more difficult to teach than moralism and threats, but has some chance of being effective.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Chicago papers are shocked: first kiss post-marriage
The Chicago papers seem surprised that a couple waits until marriage to kiss. The couple are abstinence educators, and the story seems completely unremarkable to me: while adherence among Orthodox Jews to modesty laws is far from 100% especially post-engagement, many do wait until marriage even to touch or hold hands. Personally I find the weirdest part of the situation that the couple would kiss for the first time in public.
On a related note, a Huffington Post columnist recommends that people avoid situations that require self-control because self-control is finite. She's not talking about sex in this situation, though.
The sex columnist in the Swarthmore College paper (my almost alma mater) has some good questions including some related to abstinence:
I've never seen this column before, but any sex columnist that regularly mentions a sexual ethic must be great. I'm not a regular reader of the genre (other than Dan Savage), but I've never seen the phrase "sex ethic" in any sex column.
On a related note, a Huffington Post columnist recommends that people avoid situations that require self-control because self-control is finite. She's not talking about sex in this situation, though.
The sex columnist in the Swarthmore College paper (my almost alma mater) has some good questions including some related to abstinence:
You know the old joke about the cobbler’s children having no shoes, the priest’s kids getting knocked up, and the sex columnist’s partners not getting off?
..
I’m a Swattie and this week all I’ve got for you is questions, a lot of which get to the heart of everything I’ve been writing about this semester, but none of which I have answers to.
..
Why is asking for what you really want so damn hard sometimes? Why is it that nearly every time I do ask for what I want, I get a good response, and I’m still scared of it? Why do I have a hard time, sometimes, even when I’m asked point-blank what I want? Where did I learn that it’s a bad thing to express desire?
..
Why do we think of sexual assault as only something that evil people do in evil moments, rather than as something that belongs on a behavioral continuum? Similarly, why do I still sometimes find myself on the brink of sexual activity which I don’t really want, and having a hard time saying no?
..
Why do I have an easier time talking about safe sex in a “fluids” sense than in an emotional sense? Why do so many of us have an easier time being vulnerable physically than emotionally, for that matter?
Why do people get surprised when I say that you should probably only engage in activities that could get you pregnant with somebody who agrees with you about what to do if your birth control fails?
..
Why do the people who get so upset about being judged for not being abstinent sometimes get so upset when somebody else chooses abstinence freely? How the hell does anyone still think abstinence-only education is a good idea in view of the piles of evidence that says it’s not?
Why do we focus on giving and getting sex rather than sharing sex? Is it that hard to carry over certain lessons from kindergarten? Wouldn’t this sort of model really help the whole sexual assault thing?..
And my whole sexual ethic has grown up around the idea of self-care. So recently I’ve found myself, when asked what makes for a good partner, talking about the three Cs a lot—careful, caring, and communicative.
I've never seen this column before, but any sex columnist that regularly mentions a sexual ethic must be great. I'm not a regular reader of the genre (other than Dan Savage), but I've never seen the phrase "sex ethic" in any sex column.
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