About PEERS

Evaluation

The PEERS Project’s goals and objectives are outcome oriented to measure successful fulfillment of the A-H elements of the Title V legislative definition of abstinence that are incorporated in the Community-Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) Grant’s performance measures. School-based and community-based participants and peer mentors who participated in its Peers Educating Peers about Positive Values© (PEP) intervention were surveyed and their data were analyzed by its research scientist Kenneth F. Ferraro, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Purdue University.

» PEERS complies with the A-H definition of abstinence

Significant Outcomes of PEERS Evaluation

The percent of students who said they were committed to abstain from premarital sexual activity remained relatively high throughout middle school, from 91.73% at post-6th to 82.24% at post-8th tests.

Students who did not have PEP were nearly twice as likely to have had sex compared to those students who received the program.

The greater the students’ exposure to PEP, the more likely they were to find the program helpful. This suggests that PEP has a cumulative effect. 83.3% of students who had the program for the last four years said they found PEP helpful in deciding to save sex for marriage.

The following are highlights from four surveys conducted during the 2005-2006 school year. First, findings from the 6th grade experimental design will be discussed, followed by findings from a survey administered to 9th grade students, and finally two surveys of PEERS mentors: first-year mentors and a follow-up of previous years’ mentors. The PEERS Project’s specific goals and objectives in its 2004 (SPRANS) CBAE grant were:

  • Goal 1: Increase the number of adolescent participants who are making positive choices to remain sexually abstinent until marriage.
  • Goal 2: Increase the number of adolescent participants who have the refusal and assertiveness skills they need to resist sexual urges and advances.
  • Goal 3: Increase the number of adolescent participants who indicate an understanding of the social, psychological and health gains to be realized by abstaining from premarital sexual activity.
  • Goal 4: Increase the number of adolescent participants who commit to abstain from sexual activity until marriage.

Experimental Design

Sixth grade students from three Indianapolis-area middle schools participated in this delayed-treatment, control-group study. Pre- and post-test responses were matched resulting in N=731 subjects. The treatment group was comprised of n=350 students, and the control group had n=381students.

  • Goal 1: Because these surveys were administered in the classroom, a question asking whether students had ever had sex was not asked due to its sensitive nature.
  • Goal 2: Treatment group students were more likely than control group students to say that they had learned the refusal and assertiveness skills they need to resist sexual urges and advances. 97.1% of treatment students said that they had these skills compared to 76.9% of control students. Therefore, treatment students were 20.2% more likely than control students to report having learned how to resist sexual urges and advances.
  • Goal 3: Treatment students were about 7% more likely than control students to say that they understood the social, psychological and health gains to be realized by abstaining from premarital sexual activity. 97.0% of treatment students understood the positive attributes of abstinence at Time 2 compared to 90.1% of control students.
  • Goal 4: Treatment students were 10.0% more likely than control group students to report making an abstinence commitment at Time 2. 87.5% of treatment students said they had made an abstinence commitment at Time 2 compared to 77.5% of control students.

9th Grade Survey

A total of 2,171 surveys were mailed to the parents of 9th grade students from two Indianapolis-area high schools in the spring of 2006. Parents were asked to give their 9th grade students the survey and have them complete and return it in an envelope addressed to Purdue University. A total of N=272 surveys were returned and analyzed with 74.9% (n=200) of students saying that they had the PEP program at least once between 6th and 9th grades, while 25.1% (n=67) never received the program. Few students were sexually active with 11.4% (n=31) saying that they had ever had intercourse and/or oral sex. For this summary of the 9th grade survey, the terms “sexually active” or “had sex” refer to students who reported ever having intercourse and/or oral sex.

  • Goal 1: Students who did not have PEP were nearly twice as likely to have had sex compared to those students who received the program. Among the students who had PEP, 9.5% were sexually active, while 17.9% of the students who did not have PEP reported having had sex.
  • Goal 2: Students who had PEP were more likely than those who did not have the program to report having assertiveness skills to resist sexual urges and advances. 96.0% of students who had PEP had these skills compared to 76.1% of students who never had PEP. Therefore, students who had PEP were nearly 20% more likely than those who did not have the program to report receiving education on how to resist sexual urges and advances.
  • Goal 3: Students who had PEP were more likely than those who did not have the program to report understanding the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from premarital sexual activity. 93.2% of students who had PEP reported knowing the benefits of abstaining from sex while only 89.6% of students who did not have the program said they were aware of the social, psychological and health gains of abstinence.
  • Goal 4: Students who had PEP were 17.4% more likely to report having made a commitment to abstain compared to students who did not receive the program. Among the students who had PEP, 73.5% reported having made an abstinence commitment, while 56.1% of those who did not receive PEP said that they had made an abstinence commitment.

Additionally, among those who had received PEP at least once in the previous four years, 66.7% (n=130), or two out of three 9th grade students, said that they found the program helpful in deciding to remain sexually abstinent. The greater the students’ exposure to PEP, the more likely they are to find the program helpful. This suggests that PEP has a cumulative effect. Figure 1 graphically represents this with 83.3% of students who had the program for the last four years saying they found PEP helpful in deciding to save sex for marriage.

Figure 1. Percent who Found PEP Helpful According to Number of Years of PEP (N=194)

First-Year Mentors

The PEERS Project is unique in that high school students serve as mentors and deliver PEERS curriculum through the PEP program. The following data are from a survey distributed to high school students in their first year serving as a PEP mentor. One hundred sixty one mentors were in 9th grade, 215 were in 10th, 229 were in 11th, and 136 were in 12th (data for grade level was missing for three mentors). A total of N=743 mentor surveys are included in the analyses.

  • Goal 1: Few PEP mentors have ever had sex -- 5.3% (n=39) of mentors had penile/vaginal sex and 8.2% (n=60) had oral sex. Some students had both forms of sex, and they comprised 3.6% (n=26) of the sample. All together, 10.0% (n=73) of PEP mentors ever had oral sex and/or coitus, which much lower than the national average. According to the 2005 Youth Behavior Risk Survey, 45.7% of high school students in the United States reported ever having sex. A question was posed to PEP mentors to determine when they had sex – was it before becoming a PEP mentor, or after? Interestingly, 59.7% of PEP mentors who had sex only had sex before becoming a mentor but not during their time as a mentor. Therefore, when discounting these mentors who have remained abstinent during their time as a PEP mentor, the percent of PEP mentors who have had penile/vaginal sex and/or oral sex while serving as a PEP mentor decreases from 10.0% to 5.3%.
  • Goal 2: 98.5% of mentors said that they would be able to resist the urge to have sex if pressured.
  • Goal 3: 96.4% of mentors understood the social, psychological and health gains to be realized by abstaining from premarital sexual activity.
  • Goal 4: 94.2% of mentors said that they had made a commitment to save sex for marriage. 60.5% of the sample made this commitment by the time they turned 14 years of age as depicted in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Age of Abstinence Commitments (N=676)

Online Follow-up of Mentors

An online survey follow-up survey was administered to mentors who previously took the first-year mentor survey during either the 2003-2004 or 2004-2005 school years. This survey was designed to address Goal #1 more so than the other goals since both current and past first-year mentor surveys are consistent in showing that nearly all mentors have met the objectives outlined in Goals 2 and 3. A total of N=245 mentors participated in this year’s online follow-up survey. It is important to note that the majority of this sample was college age; 76.4% (n=157) of respondents said that they would be a student in college during the 2006-2007 academic school year.

  • Goal 1: Mentors were asked if they had engaged in pre-sexual behavior such as hand holding, kissing, or touching another’s breasts or buttocks. A total of 91.7% (n=209) had ever held hands with someone to whom they were attracted, 96.1% (n=219) had hugged or kissed someone to whom they were attracted, and 60.3% (n=132) had ever touched the breast or buttocks of someone to whom they were attracted. Despite these pre-sexual behaviors, a low percentage of mentors had ever had sex -- 15.5% (n=34) of mentors had ever had penile/vaginal sex while 25.5% (n=55) ever had oral sex. Among those who had not had any form of sex, 80.6% reported being “very satisfied” with being a virgin during this time in their life. Similar to first-year mentors, the follow-up mentors became committed to abstinence at a young age, with 67.9% making an abstinence commitment by the time they were 15.
  • Goal 2: A total of 94.5% (n=155) of follow-up mentors said that they had made a commitment to abstinence.

When community-based (after-school) program participants were surveyed, modest change in many of the indicators for each session was observed and statistically significant differences were observed in two sessions: Assertiveness and What Love Really Is. Regarding assertiveness, the program clearly impacts young persons’ knowledge that “being assertive means I am able to do what I think is best for my health and future.” Regarding what love really is, there was a significant increase in the percentage of students who reported that they “know the difference between love and infatuation.”



"I like getting to know some of the highschoolers who abstain to attain. I didn't know that so many of them did. I hope I can be part of that group of people."