{"id":6173,"date":"2009-01-08T13:01:22","date_gmt":"2009-01-08T20:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6173"},"modified":"2009-01-08T13:01:22","modified_gmt":"2009-01-08T20:21:10","slug":"a-bit-more-about-the-virginity-pledge-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6173","title":{"rendered":"A bit more about the virginity pledge study&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/12\/29\/sun-rises-in-east-sets-in-west\/\">an earlier post<\/a>, Jeff quoted the first two paragraphs of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/12\/28\/AR2008122801588.html?hpid=topnews\">a <em>Washington Post<\/em> story<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.<\/p>\n<p>The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a &#8220;virginity pledge,&#8221; but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I hate to admit that <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123120095259855597.html\">William McGurn<\/a> has a point, but in this case he does. What <a href=\"http:\/\/pediatrics.aappublications.org\/cgi\/content\/full\/123\/1\/e110?maxtoshow=&#038;HITS=10&#038;hits=10&#038;RESULTFORMAT=&#038;fulltext=virginity&#038;searchid=1&#038;FIRSTINDEX=0&#038;volume=123&#038;issue=1&#038;resourcetype=HWCIT\">the study<\/a> actually did was compare pledge takers to non-pledge takers<em> among religious teenagers who think that teens should wait to have sex<\/em>.  According to McGurn, when compared to <em>typical <\/em>teenagers, pledge-takers actually had less sex and stayed virgins longer.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Post <\/em>article eventually presents a bit more information, but the leading two paragraphs are misleading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In an earlier post, Jeff quoted the first two paragraphs of a Washington Post story: Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6173\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}