Premarital abstinence pledges don't work: Study

Teens who pledge to stay virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence, and are less likely to use condoms and other birth control when they do, according to a new study.

The new study found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy was 10 points lower for pledgers.

"Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behaviour," the Washington Post quoted Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, as saying.

"But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of
birth control that is quite striking," Rosenbaum added.

Rosenbaum analyzed data collected by the federal government's National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which gathered detailed information from a representative sample of about 11,000 students in grades seven through 12 in 1995, 1996 and 2001.

Although researchers have analyzed data from that survey before to examine abstinence education programs, the new study is the first to use a more stringent method to account for other factors that could influence the teens'' behaviour, such as their attitudes about sex before they took the pledge.