Sex education and abstinence: Programs and evaluation

This special issue of Children and Youth Services Review is the final part of a three-part series on sex education and abstinence programs. The first two parts, published as a double issue (Vol. 19, Nos. 5 & 6), explored what is known about adolescent learning and development, the effectiveness of sex education and abstinence programs, and how such programs might be redesigned to be more effective. A major theme running through the earlier papers is that little is known about the effectiveness of sex education and abstinence programs. Many of the papers pointed to poorly designed and funded evaluations as a major cause. The papers in this volume of the Review address evaluation methodology: They aim to help researchers, policy makers, and program operators understand the necessary elements of successful evaluations-and the design choices that must be made at the outset.