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Impact Data - TeenSTAR

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This study is an evaluation of TeenSTAR, an abstinence-based, teenage pregnancy prevention programme in Santiago, Chile. The study was intended to provide a strictly controlled setting for evaluating the effectiveness of a sex education programme. The authors have argued that while many studies have hinted at the positive impact of sex-education programmes in reducing teenage pregnancies, few had had the proper control measures needed to fully establish the casual role of an education programme. The study measured the rate of pregnancies over several cohorts of teenagers just entering high school.

The TeenSTAR programme itself was an abstinence-only sexual education programme stressing the importance of the biological and physiological aspects of fertility. It provided special training in fertility awareness, together with the psychological and personal aspects of sexuality using a combination of group discussions, brainstorming, fertility awareness instruction, homework, videotapes and skill building activities.

The programme consisted of 14 units, spread out over the school year. Each unit was developed in one or more 45-minute classes depending on the achievement of the objectives by the students before going on to the next unit.

Methodologies
A total of 1,259 girls from a Santiago high school were divided into three cohorts depending on the year they started high school (which in Chile is equivalent to the ninth year of schooling, making the girls between the ages of 14-15). The 1996 cohort of 425 students, which received no intervention; the 1997 cohort, in which 210 students received an intervention and 213 (control group) did not; and the 1998 cohort, in which 328 students received an intervention and 83 (control group) did not. Students were randomly assigned to control and intervention groups in these cohorts, before starting with the programme. All cohorts were followed up for 4 years; pregnancy rates were recorded and subsequently contrasted in the intervention and control groups.
Practices
The results of this study demonstrated that the TeenSTAR programme was extremely effective in reducing teenage pregnancies. While the authors do suggest that their results in these controlled conditions effectively indicate the causality of programme in reducing pregnancies, they do not attempt to explain what the causal mechanism is. This is particularly important because the programme is almost exclusively focused on abstinence and does not promote contraceptive use as a viable option other than in a brief passing reference in a single module. They suggest that more research is needed.

The following data reveals the changes in pregnancy rates between the pre-intervention cohort and the test and control groups in the following two cohorts of teenage girls.

1996
% Avg. number of pregnancies over 4 years = 13.2, a rate of 3.86%
Total number of pregnancies over 4 years = 53, a rate of 14.7%

1997 - Control Group
Avg. number of pregnancies over 4 years = 8.75, a rate of 4.87%
Total number of pregnancies over 4 years = 35, a rate of 18.91%

1997 - Intervention Group
Avg. number of pregnancies over 4 years = 1.5, a rate of 0.87%
Total number of pregnancies over 4 years = 6, a rate of 3.3%

1998 - Control Group
Avg. number of pregnancies over 4 years = 4.25, a rate of 5.88%
Total number of pregnancies over 4 years = 17*, a rate of 22.66%

1998 - Intervention Group
Avg. number of pregnancies over 4 years = 3.2, a rate of 1.16%
Total number of pregnancies over 4 years = 13*, a rate of 4.43%

* Note that in the 1998 cohort, the school itself requested that the number of girls included in the intervention group be increased, because of the dramatic success of the programme in the previous year. Thus while the 1997 cohort was evenly divided between control and intervention groups, in the 1998 cohort, 80% of the girls were in the intervention group.
Source
Population Reporter, January 2005; Carlos Cabez