Evaluation of Pregnancy Prevention Programs for Urban Teens, 1981-1984
Investigators: Laurie S. Zabin, Marilyn B. Hirsch, Edward A. Smith & Mark R. Emerson

This study was an evaluation of the effectiveness of a school-based program for the primary prevention of pregnancy among inner-city adolescents. The study was designed and administered by the staff of The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's Department of Pediatrics and Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics. The project was carried out with the cooperation of the administrators of four schools in the Baltimore school system - two junior high schools and two senior high schools. The program provided the students attending one of the junior high schools and one of the senior high schools with sexuality and contraceptive education, individual and group counseling, and medical and contraceptive services over a period of almost three school years. Students in the remaining two schools received no such services, but provided baseline and end-of-project data, and served as the control sample. An evaluation component was built into the project to assess changes in the knowledge, attitudes and behavior of the school populations. The resulting data set for this study includes 570 variables and 9,378 cases.