CORRECTED: Sex ed in schools may help delay teen sex

CORRECTED: Sex ed in schools may help delay teen sex
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Sex education in school mayencourage teenagers to put off having sexual intercourse, theresults of a U.S. government study suggests.
The study, published Wednesday in the Journal of AdolescentHealth, did not whether the type of program matters -- that is,abstinence-only versus more-comprehensive programs.
However, the findings do suggest that having some form ofsex education helps delay teen sex, according to theresearchers, from the Centers for Disease Control andPrevention (CDC) in Atlanta.
In a national survey of more than 2,000 adolescents between15 and 19 years old, the researchers found that teens who hadsex ed in school were more likely to put off sex until at leastage 15. Furthermore, boys who received sex ed were less likelyto have started having sex at all.
"Sex education seems to be working," lead researcher Dr.Trisha E. Mueller, an epidemiologist with the CDC, said in astatement.
In particular, she noted, some of the greatest benefitswere seen in the teens who may need them the most -- urban,African-American girls. In this group of girls, those who'dreceived sex education were 91-percent less likely to have hadsex before age 15 years.
Overall, male study participants who'd received sexeducation were 71 percent less likely to have had sex beforeage 15 than those who'd had no formal sex ed. Among femaleparticipants, sex ed reduced those odds by 59 percent.
Male respondents who'd had sex education were more likelyto say they would used birth control the first time they hadsex. No similar effect was seen among girls.
There were certain groups of teens who did not seem tobenefit from sex education. Girls from rural areas were morelikely to have ever had sex when they'd received sex education;and among white and Hispanic girls who eventually dropped outof high school, those who received sex ed were less likely todelay having sex.
The reasons are unclear, according to Mueller's team, andthe findings may be due to chance because the numbers of studyparticipants in these groups were small.
"Sex education," they conclude, "provides youth with theknowledge and skills to make healthy and informed decisionsabout sex, and this study indicates that sex education ismaking a difference in the sexual behaviors of American youth."
SOURCE: Journal of Adolescent Health, January 2008.