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The battle over what type of sex education programs should be taught in our nation’s schools continues, partly because data are limited regarding the effectiveness of any one approach. Investigators at the University of Washington used nationally representative data from the ongoing National Survey of Family Growth to study the effect of sex education on adolescent sexual behavior. Adolescents (age range, 15–19 years) were asked questions about sex education, sexual behavior, pregnancy, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
Overall, 1719 of the original adolescent sample met the study criteria: never-married heterosexual teens who were virgins when they received abstinence-only or comprehensive sex education; those who reported no sex …