RESEARCH SUMMARY

July 2003

The Impact of Life Skills Education on Adolescent Sexual Risk Behaviors

Methods

Because the South Africa life skills initiative aimed to be a full coverage program, it was not possible to use a randomized control design to measure program impact. This is because schools initiated life skills education at different speeds and intensities. The study therefore measured young people’s recall of topics from their school training and assessed the differences in sexual and reproductive health knowledge and behaviors, given that these young people were differentially exposed to the topics. This is called measuring the dose-response relationship between indicators of exposure to education and sexual-reproductive health knowledge and behaviors. All the multivariate models used in this study control for unmeasured factors using a variable for survey year. A significant effect for this survey year variable was found for many of the models and may be interpreted as reflecting the combined effects of maturation of youth, exposure to sources of information other than life skills education, and general secular trends.

Exposure to life skills was measured by respondents’ report of having been taught about 11 key sexual and reproductive health topics during school classes (see box).

Behavioral outcomes included:

• Sexual abstinence to either postpone first sex (delay initiation) or, for those already initiated, reduce risk through secondary abstinence.
• No more than one sex partner in the past 12 months.
• Condom use (i.e., condom use at first sex, condom use at last sex, and consistency of condom use with all partners).

Separate analyses were conducted by sex, race, and age.

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See Also

• Population Council – Gender, Family, and Development Program
• Population Council – HIV/AIDS
• Transitions to Adulthood

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Horizons 
Population Council 
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Washington, DC 20008
Telephone: +1 202 237 9400 
Facsimile: +1 202 237 8410 
E-mail: horizons@popcouncil.org 

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This page updated
19 October 2007