William Atkins
Wednesday, 19 November 2008 20:21
Science -
Biology
Page 2 of 4
The Rand researchers found that
“Exposure to sexual content on television predicted teen pregnancy, with adjustment for all covariates.”
Lead researcher Anita Chandra stated,
"Watching this kind of sexual content on television is a powerful factor in increasing the likelihood of a teen pregnancy.” [The Washington Post: “
Study First to Link TV Sex To Real Teen Pregnancies”]
She emphasized,
"We found a strong association." [The Washington Post]
They found that teenagers that watched large amounts of sex on TV were twice as likely to experience a pregnancy, when compared to teens that watched small amounts of TV sex, in the following three years.
The researchers found that 718 of the teenagers (that's approximately 36% of those 2,003 teens) admitted to being sexually active during the study.
The results showed that the teens that watched the least amount of sex on TV were involved in a pregnancy only 12% of the time.
While the teens that viewed the most sexual content on TV were about 25% likely to be involved in a pregnancy.
In addition, 58 girls reported getting pregnant during the survey period, while 33 boys reported being responsible for getting a girl pregnant.
Page three provides comments by lead Rand researcher Dr. Chandra.
