Youth Development Approaches in Adolescent Family Life Demonstration Projects

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

BACKGROUND

"How can adolescents be better connected to their families and schools, and will these connections result in decreased sexual activity?" "What effective practices can [we] use to assist adolescents and young adults in sexual decisionmaking?" A panel of experts articulated these questions in "Future Directions in Family Planning Research" (Sonenstein, Punja, and Scarcella 2004, p.37), a study sponsored by the Office of Population Affairs. The panel assigned high priority to identifying successful approaches to address the sexual and reproductive needs of adolescents. Despite continuing drops in births to teenagers, the teen birthrate in the United States is still one of the highest among developed countries. The social and financial costs of early childbearing still generate considerable public concern.

Youth development (YD) strategies in conjunction with appropriate age-graded sexuality and family life education programs/curricula may have an important role to play in formulating convincing answers to these questions. Youth development approaches help youth enhance their assets rather than concentrating on their difficulties. They focus on where youth are going, helping them develop a belief in a viable future and in their ability to take actions that will bring that future about. The commitment to a future that would be disrupted by a pregnancy during adolescence is about the only thing that Zabin and her colleagues (1986) found to differentiate among Baltimore adolescents using teen clinics who did and did not get pregnant. Teens without a strong reason to avoid pregnancy got pregnant at the same rate as those who wanted to get pregnant; the only teens who were successful at avoiding pregnancy were those who had a future goal that a pregnancy would disrupt. Thus, incorporating youth development principles along with some specific techniques into the work of the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs' (OAPP) abstinence-oriented programs would seem to be an important program enhancement with potentially valuable impacts.

Adding further impetus to OAPP's interest in conducting useful evaluations is an everstrengthening emphasis throughout government and among prevention scientists on performance measurement and use of strong scientific evidence to aid decisions about funding, implementation, and extension of social, health, and educational intervention programs and services. A small number of evaluations of comprehensive programs (denotated "Abstinence Plus" curricula) based on strong experimental or quasi-experimental designs appear to be relatively effective in postponing first intercourse, decreasing the number of partners, increasing contraceptive use, and/or decreasing the incidence of pregnancy, births, and STDs (reviews by Kirby 2001; Manlove, Franzetta, et al. 2004; Manlove, Romano-Papillo, & Ikramullah 2004). Currently, the evidence base for abstinence-only programs—the type of program under review in this report—is more equivocal. Because these programs are newer, rigorous evaluations have only recently been fielded. Further, many of the most promising programs and approaches target preadolescents, in an attempt to reach teens befo re they initiate sexual activity and while their attitudes and intentions may be more amenable to influence. This age targeting is appropriate, given what research tells us about many interventions (captured in the phrase "too little, too late"). But from the perspective of trying to evaluate the impact of these programs, the short span of most follow- up data collection schedules (i.e., 6-24 months postintervention) will not capture the times when these participants begin to experience dating and sexual risk-taking situations.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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