Applied Statistics - Janet Rosenbaum 

 This week, the Applied Statistics Workshop will present a talk by Janet Rosenbaum, a Ph.D. candidate in the Program on Health Policy at Harvard.  She majored in physics as an undergraduate at Harvard College and received an AM in statisics last year.    Janet will present a talk entitled "  Do virginity pledges cause virginity?: Estimating the efficacy of sexual abstinence pledges ".  She has a publication forthcoming in the American Journal of Public Health on related research.  The presentation will be at noon on Wednesday, March 1 in Room N354, CGIS North, 1737 Cambridge St. Lunch will be provided. The abstract of the paper follows on the jump: 


 
Objectives:  To determine the efficacy of virginity pledges in delaying
sexual debut for sexually inexperienced adolescents in the National
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).

 Methods:  Subjects were virgin respondents without wave 1 pledge who 
reported their attitudes towards sexuality and birth control at wave 1 
(n=3443).  Nearest-neighbor matching within propensity score calipers 
was used to match wave 2 virginity pledgers (n=291) with non-pledgers, 
based on wave 1 attitudes, demographics, and religiosity.  Treatment 
effects due to treatment assignment were calculated.     

 Results (Preliminary):  17% of virginity pledgers are compliant with their pledge, and do not 
recant at wave 3 their earlier report of having taken a pledge.  Similar 
proportions of virginity pledgers and non-pledgers report having had 
pre-marital sex (54% and 61%, p=0.16) and test positive for chlamydia 
(2.7% and 2.9%, p=0.89). 

 Conclusions:  Five years after taking a virginity pledge, most virginity 
pledgers fail to report having pledged.  Virginity pledges do not affect 
the incidence of self-reported pre-marital sex or assay-determined 
chlamydia.