Evidence Base
Challenge Team UK presents its material from a health and social perspective, without religious references. It does not ‘preach’ or ‘moralise’. The rationale is evidence based.
A selection of the following statistics are used in presentations:
YOUNG PEOPLE’S ATTITUDES
- The Impulse Questionnaire of 500 17 year olds, reported in the Times on 24th September 04, revealed that ‘marriage’ was fourth in the list of what the teens rated as the most important things in life.
- A quarter of 16-25 year olds say they avoid sex outside of marriage. This was reported in Young People Now, 7-13 March 2007. The source was nfpSynergy Youth Engagement Monitor and consisted of 641 respondents.
- In Sex Under 16? – research reported in 2000 and commissioned by Family Education Trust, nearly one in five 13 to 15 year olds say they believe that ‘sex before marriage is always wrong’.
- In the same survey, Sex Under 16?, 89 per cent of 13 to 15 year olds said they would like to get married one day – 91 per cent of white young people, 90 per cent with an Asian background and 84 per cent with an African or Afro-caribbean background.
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A third of 12 to 19 year olds think sex between people who are under 16 is always wrong, the National Centre for Social Research found. Its Young People’s Social Attitudes Survey found boys to be more traditional than girls in their views on parenting.
Children Now, 1-7 September 04, Section 5.2
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Up to one in eight sexually active young people carry one or more infections at any one time. Some studies have reported that amongst 16-24 year olds, the infection rate for Chlamydia alone is one in ten.
The Times, October 15, 2007 -
Over 600,000 new cases of STIs are diagnosed each year in the UK, up from 500,000 in 2000, and 420,000 in 1995.
Health Protection Agency Statistics -
80 to 85 per cent of women and 40 per cent of men infected with Chlamydia have no symptoms.
Health Protection Agency
The Medical Institute : Chlamydia Factsheet -
Untreated, Chlamydia can go on to cause pelvic inflammatory disease. This
disease damages the reproductive organs in women and can lead to infertility.
Recent evidence has also shown that Chlamydia can cause infertility in men.
NHS Direct Health Encyclopaedia -
‘The inevitable consequence of a modern conventional sex life is that 70 to 80 per cent of women will suffer genital infection with HPV, the human wart virus, at some time.’
Dr Thomas Stuttaford, "Close encounters of the worst kind" The Times, 6th February 06 -
Two strains of HPV are responsible for 90 per cent of cervical cancer.
Health Protection Agency -
The cervix is not fully mature until a woman is 18 or 19 years old. An immature cervix is more vulnerable to infection.
Pelvic Inflammatory Disease Pletcher and Slap Pediatrics in Review.1998
The Gynecological Sourcebook By M. Sara Rosenthal
Chlamydia: The Hidden S.T.D. By Michael Cannell
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Condom manufacturers state 97 to 98 per cent reliability. User failure rate is approximately 15 per cent. (Reasons for user failure rate: Adolescence/immaturity; Careless use; Alcohol influence;
Old/damaged condoms)
National Collaborating Centre for Women’s and Children’s Health, 2005 Table 3.2
Stanford Sexual Health peer Resource Center - Barrier methods
NHS Clinical Knowledge Summaries - Contraceptives -
There is limited evidence that condom use provides substantial protection against Chlamydia, though, theoretically, it should offer some – perhaps as high as 60%.
http://www.medinstitute.org/content.php?name=chlamydia -
Human Papilloma Virus is most probably transmitted by both skin to skin contact
as well as by the virus present in the genital fluids. There is little evidence
that condom use reduces transmission of HPV, although it may offer some
protection.
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) -
According to the According to the latest American research, if 12 women take oral contraceptives for a year, one of them will become pregnant. For condoms the odds are closer to one in six. The statistics are a concern when you consider that nearly every teenager and young woman in Britain depends on them (other methods barely feature among under-35s).
Dr Mark Porter writing for The Times; Weds Oct 21 2009. -
Even if emergency contraception can work (is efficacious),
the experimental evidence that it does work
(is effective) is disappointing. Ten studies in different
countries have shown that giving women a supply of
emergency contraception to keep at home, so that they
have it when they need it, increases use by twofold to
threefold. In three studies that measured subsequent
pregnancy rates, advance provision of emergency contraception
increased its use but had no measurable
effect on rates of pregnancy or abortion.
Emergency Contraception, Anna Glasier, BMJ 2006 333; 560-561 -
I find consistent evidence that access to family planning services is not associated with reductions in teenage pregnancy rates.
Random behaviour or rational choice? Family planning, teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. David Paton Nottingham University Business School, UK Sex Education Vol 6 No 3, Aug 2006, pp 281-308
- The Natsal 2000 Report found that for both men and women the number of heterosexual partners has increased over the past decade, and these increases have been highest in young people. The mean number of lifetime partners for men has increased from 8.6 in 1990 to 12.7 in 2000 and in women from 3.6 in 1990 to 6.5 in 2000.
- The percentage of young women aged 16 to 24 drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week in the UK rose from 15 per cent in 1989 to 33 per cent in 2003. Up to 1,000 young people a week suffer serious facial injuries as a result of drunken assaults. Some 18,000 young people are scarred for life each year.
Young People Now, 4th August 2004
National Statistics Online - Many young women say that they used alcohol - or were drunk - when they first had sex. And many of these same young women say that they were so drunk that they were unable to use contraception (especially condoms) properly at the time. In one study of unplanned pregnancies in 14-21 year olds, 1/3 of the girls who had got pregnant had been drinking when they had sex; 91% of them reported that the sex was unplanned.
Flanigan, B., Mclean, A., Hall, C., & Propp, V. (1990). Alcohol use as a situational influence on young women's pregnancy risk-taking behaviours. Adolescence, 25: 205-214.
Teenpregnancy.org
AlcoholConcern.org.uk
- Surveys show that four in ten pregnancies in the UK are unintended. A survey, commissioned by evriwoman.co.uk, and reported in March 2004, revealed that 62 per cent of these mothers blamed problems with the pill, while 19 per cent reported a split condom. Only 3 per cent reported not using contraception at all.
This is similar to a survey published in the BMJ in January 1991 (Unintended pregnancies and the use of contraception: changes from 1984 to 1989). In a study of 2,000 births in England and Wales in a single month in 1989, 31.3 per cent of births were the result of unintended pregnancies. Of these mothers 70 per cent had used contraception when the conception took place, 68% per cent of them using the pill. In 1984, 26.7 per cent of pregnancies were unintended, 49.9 per cent using the pill.
BMJ 1991 302 p147 - One GP, writing in the BMJ in 2000, said that in almost 15 years of general
practice he had not seen a single case of an unplanned pregnancy which resulted
from ignorance about or unavailability of contraception.
BMJ 2000 321 1520-1522 - Statistics show that 20 per cent of teenage pregnancies are second or subsequent pregnancies. Beverley Hughes, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, House of Commons, reported in National Youth Agency Electronic Update, issue 190, 6th February, 2008
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A study of pregnant teens from the Midlands found that 71 per cent of girls interviewed had discussed contraception with a health professional in the year prior to conceiving, while 50 per cent had been prescribed the pill.
Churchill et al, BMJ, Aug 2000; 321: 486 – 489 -
Research by Lesley Hoggart, Young Women and Sexual Decision Making, reported by
Forum for Qualitative Social Research, Volume 7, No 1, Article 28 in January
2006, considers young people’s sexual decision making. The research studied two qualitative research projects amongst 14 to 16 year old school girls, including teenage mothers. The focus of the research was on their explanations of their decision-making in relation to engaging in ‘risky’ sexual activity, to becoming pregnant and to deciding whether to terminate a confirmed pregnancy.
‘Many of the young women spoke of their pregnancies as accidents … Most of them said they had been using contraception and that they had been completely surprised when they found themselves pregnant. Despite often describing their pregnancies as “accidents”, these young mothers also spoke about taking responsibility for their own “mistakes”. This meant continuing with the pregnancy rather than having an abortion.
‘Another grouping of young mothers described random, often careless contraceptive use. This was despite understanding the risk of pregnancies and STIs. Most were more worried about STIs than becoming pregnant … They were careless regarding contraceptive use not because they lacked knowledge about contraception but rather that they were not overly concerned to avoid pregnancy. - Since the Government Teenage Pregnancy Strategy was introduced in 1999 abortion rates in under 16s have risen by 16% and STIs in the same age group by 64%. Since 2002 abortion rates in under 16s have risen by 18.9% and STIs by 27.9%. Government Office for National Statistics and Health Protection Agency, as reported in The Times, February 2009.
- In a study of 2519 unmarried women who gave birth in 1988, only one in four married within the next eight years. Amongst these 25 per cent, 19 per cent married the father and 6 per cent married someone other than the father. Seventy five per cent of the sample had not married by 1996.
Office for National Statistics, Population Trends 97, Autumn 99 - Cohabiting unions currently make up 70 per cent of first partnerships. Cohabitations last an average of two years before dissolving or being converted to marriage. Of cohabiting couples who do not marry, only about 18 per cent survive at least ten years, compared to 75 per cent of couples who do marry. Children born into married unions are estimated to be twice as likely as those born into cohabiting unions to spend their entire childhood with both natural parents (70 per cent versus 36 per cent).
Ermisch and Francesconi (2000) ‘Patterns of household and family formation’ pp38-40
Population Trends 96, Office for National Statistics - A 1991 study published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family found that
40 per cent of cohabiting unions disrupt before marriage, and marriages that
began as cohabiting unions have a 50 per cent higher disruption rate than those
that did not.
The Role of Cohabitation in Declining Rates of Marriage,Larry L. Bumpass, James A. Sweet, Andrew Cherlin, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol 53, 1991, pp 913-927
