A January 22 article in The Washington Times inaccurately reports that the majority of young people support abstinence-only education.
Check it out:
Critics of abstinence-only sex-education programs may be too hasty in judgment. There is support for the method among age groups that count -- the young.According to a new Harris Poll, 56 percent of people ages 18 to 24, and 60 percent of those 25 to 29 think abstinence programs effectively reduce or prevent the occurrence of HIV/AIDS. Another 49 percent of people ages 18 to 24 and 52 percent of those ages 25 to 29 say the programs reduce or prevent unwanted pregnancies.
The problem is, the Harris poll didn't ask respondents about abstinence-only education programs. They asked about “programs to promote abstinence.” All sex education programs promote abstinence!
Comprehensive sex education promotes abstinence as well as contraception use; abstinence-only education teaches that refraining from sex is the only option. But the reporting in this piece distorts that very big difference.
Even more:
Among six age groups and three political groups, younger respondents showed the strongest support for abstinence over safe-sex programs.
The Harris poll doesn’t ask if abstinence education is preferable over “safe-sex” programs. It only asks if “programs that promote abstinence” are effective. The questions listed on the poll don’t even mention “safe sex” programs.
The article goes on to confuse abstinence-only ed with the questions in the poll in a number of ways; you can check it out for yourself.
But I call bullshit.
(By the way: the majority of all the people polled thought that “programs that support abstinence” were not effective in reducing HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancies or extra-marital sex.)
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What else can you expect from a paper bankrolled by complete wackos? I'd be a bit more upset if this appeared in the Post.
agreed. but it also went out across the kaiser network, which i found kind of weird.
Even if the facts had been accurate, I still don't understand the point. I'm sure that 60% of high-school kids think that higher math is useless, or that reading books makes them nerdy. Why would the students' perception of the effectiveness of the curriculum matter more than the demonstrated effectiveness of the curriculum?
Sloppy? Biased?
I can see to some extent why the Washington Times writer read the poll the way that she did. "Abstinence Program" would likely mean to many people, "Abstinence-only" program, (as opposed to sex education) and they wouldn't give any further thought to it. IMHO. Having stated that...
By whom was this Harris Poll funded? Because the imprecise wording of the questions -- and indeed the choice of questions asked -- makes drawing any conclusions about anything nearly impossible (as Jessica indicated). Strategically speaking, this apparent sloppiness would be a great move for supporters of abstinence-only programs, as obviously they've already gotten at least a little positive exposure from the poll, with more likely to follow.
Conjecture here, but it looks as though the writer of the article received a press release, and things went from there -- She left out the most important part of the study (from the Harris Poll itself), "In reviewing these poll results, one should bear in mind that these results only measure perceptions. They do not provide any measures of the actual effectiveness of these programs." Of course, quoting that would have revealed that there was no story there, in the first place.
Please forgive me if I state the obvious: I'm new to this, having just (happily) discovered feminist blogs.
this reminds me of a recent "this modern world," in which tom tomorrow poses the eternal question: republicans -- stupid, or lying?