The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #49955

Clara S. Haignere, PhD, MPH, CHES, Department of Health Studies, Temple University, 301E Vivacqua Hall, Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore, Philadelphia, PA 19122, 215 204-5109, chaigner@nimbus.temple.edu and Gerald K. Arnold, PhD, MPH, American Society of Internal Medicine, American College of Physicians, 190 North Independence Mall West, Philadelphia, PA 19106-1572.

Condom-method failure rates and user-failure rates are well documented in the literature. However, researchers are only just beginning to establish abstinence user-failure rates. This presentation offers new data to this area of research using data from the 1999 Philadelphia YRBS. In 1999 the Philadelphia Youth Risk Behavior Survey (n=958) included a question about whether students had ever promised themselves to wait to have sex until marriage. Overall almost 38% of the adolescents had made such a promise to themselves while 62% had not. (Over 50% of females and 20% of males reported making this promise.) Of those young people who had promised themselves to wait until marriage, 55% were still virgins compared to 40% of those who had not made such a promise. However, 45% of those who had made the promise failed to keep it and had sexual intercourse anyway. This perhaps suggests a 45% abstinence user-failure rate. However, does this constitutes a true failure rate if no negative consequence (e.g. pregnancy or STD) resulted? We conducted regression analyses to establish the risk factors for age at first sexual intercourse, pregnancies, number of partners in lifetime, condom and other contraceptive usage, and commitment of abstinence. Some of the results include the finding that pregnancies were significantly positively correlated with feeling sad and hopeless, number of partners in last 3 months, and having made a promise of abstinence until marriage. Thus, having made a commitment to be abstinence until marriage was associated with pregnancies.

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