"Our findings suggest that television may play a significant role in the high rates of teenage pregnancy in the United States," Chandra said in a Nov. 3 article in the Canadian newspaper The National Post. "We're not saying we're establishing causation, but we are saying this is one factor that we were able to prospectively link to the teen pregnancy outcome."
A Nov. 5 Medscape Today article by Marlene Busko provided the following highlights of the RAND study:
- 2,003 teenagers completed the baseline phone interview about television viewing in 2001, and 1,461 of the teens also completed two follow-up phone interviews, which were conducted in 2002 and 2004.
- The researchers focused on 23 television programs - including dramas, comedies, reality shows, and animated cartoons - that were widely available to (and popular with) teens, and which contained sexual content that included physical flirting, sexual talk, and intercourse.
- 718 participants had engaged in sexual activity by the third survey and reported data on pregnancy status.
- At the time of the third survey, 58 girls had become pregnant and 33 boys had fathered a child over the three-year period. This meant that 14 percent of those who had participated in the surveys had been involved in a pregnancy - almost double the 7.6 percent teen pregnancy rate in the general population.
On its website, the RAND Corporation is described as "a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis." The RAND research was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a component of the National Institutes of Health.
Labels: sex, influences, TV
Posted By: Aspen Education Group
