Reducing unintended pregnancy among adolescents

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7367.777/a

BMJ 2002;325:777 ( 5 October )

Letters

Reducing unintended pregnancy among adolescents

Authors did not give balanced interpretation of their findings

Changes in social, economic, and educational policy need to be taken into account

Authors did not give balanced interpretation of their findings

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ DiCenso et al provided a rigorous, systematic review of randomised, controlled trials to reduce unintended pregnanciesin adolescents.¹ They did not, however, provide a balancedinterpretation of their findings. Specifically, the main researchquestion in the study and the conclusions that were drawn fromit are inconsistent. Since within 21 of 26 trials reviewed, or81%, the control condition was actually conventional sex education,this was not a study about whether or not sex educationworks.

Rather, this was a study that compared the efficacy of theory driven sex education with conventional sex education. What DiCensoet al found, contrary to previous findings,² is that theorydriven sex education did not outperform conventional sex education.The strongest conclusion that can be drawn is that in this selectgroup of studies, the two conditions come out equal in terms ofbehavioural outcomes. It is troubling that DiCenso et al pointthis . . . [Full text of this article]

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