Analyst Believes Bias Skewed Virginity Study Results
by Bill Fancher
June 21, 2005
(AgapePress) - Researchers at the Heritage Foundation are challenging the findings of a Yale University study, which concluded that virginity pledges do not help young people avoid sexually transmitted diseases or unplanned pregnancy.Heritage Foundation researcher Robert Rector led a study that challenges the findings of the Yale researchers. "We looked at the exact same database that these liberal academics looked at, and we found that they had really distorted their Information," he says.
From the same material, Rector and his team came to very different conclusions. He notes, "Adolescents who took a virginity pledge were about 25 percent less likely to get an STD. They're also less likely to have a child out of wedlock; they're less likely to engage in nonmarital sexual activity; they're less likely to engage in sex while in high school.
The Heritage Foundation spokesman says the data from the Yale study clearly showed that those young people who take virginity pledges are less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, and therefore less likely to suffer the adverse consequences -- exactly the opposite conclusions reached by the Yale researchers.
Rector believes he knows why the Yale study was skewed: anything that promotes abstinence is hated by the Left, he says, and he suspects that was behind the distortions in the interpretation of Yale's virginity pledge study.
"[Abstinence is] a 'red state' phenomenon," he contends. "The president likes abstinence education; it's associated with religion. So it's just something for them to really beat up on and hate."
Bill Fancher, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
