Published 10 September 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1492
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1492

Letters

Sex education

Does education really alter adolescent sexual behaviour?

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

We were surprised that Kirby was so quick to advocate that programmes such as Talking Parents, Healthy Teens be introduced generally to the workplace.^{1 2} We have some methodological concerns.

The authors fail to comment on why, according to the published protocol NCT 00465010, the achieved sample size of 569 was so much smaller than the intended 1300.

In the published protocol the primary end point is defined as simply "parent child communication." In the paper this is reported in many ways (ability to communicate, openness of communication, number of topics discussed) and also at a range of time points. Was the primary outcome predefined more precisely in an unpublished version of the protocol?

The CONSORT flow diagram in the electronic version of the paper does not separate the number of participants allocated to each treatment arm and the number who received each treatment. Nor does it show parental attendance rate . . . [Full text of this article]

¹ University of Nottingham Medical School, Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham NG7 2UH

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Authors’ reply

Mark A Schuster
BMJ 2008 337: a1595. [Extract] [Full Text]

Increasing communication between parents and their children about sex

Douglas Kirby
BMJ 2008 337: a206. [Extract] [Full Text]

Evaluation of Talking Parents, Healthy Teens, a new worksite based parenting programme to promote parent-adolescent communication about sexual health: randomised controlled trial

Mark A Schuster, Rosalie Corona, Marc N Elliott, David E Kanouse, Karen L Eastman, Annie J Zhou, and David J Klein
BMJ 2008 337: a308. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Schuster, M. A (2008). Authors' reply. BMJ 337: a1595-a1595 [Full text]  

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