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The American Teen Study (contribution to Adolescent Sexuality wiki page)

Gardner, W., & Wilcox, B. L. (1993). Political Intervention in Scientific Peer Review: Research on Adolescent Sexual Behavior. American Psychologist, 48(9), 972-983.

In 1988, two professors from the University of North Carolina, Ronald Rindfuss and J. Richard Udry, submitted a proposal to The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the health-related risk behaviors of adolescents that potentially expose them to life-threatening diseases such as AIDS (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 972). The study was intended to collect important data on the patterns of adolescent sexual behavior that would give insight to the public about the behaviors that lead teenagers to contract AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The study was designed to capture data on a national sample of 24,000 youth from the seventh to the eleventh grade (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 972). The American Teen Study had initially been approved by both the National Advisory Council of the NICHD and by other NICHD officials, granting the study funding up to $2.5 million for the first year commencing in May of 1991 (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 973).

One month after the approval start date of the study, Secretary Louis Sullivan of Health and Human Services (HHS) cancelled the research study after having been questioned and berated by those that did not believe a study on adolescent sexual behaviors would be beneficial to the general public. According to Charrow (1991), this may have been the first time that a previously awarded amount of funding had been revoked (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 973). The American Teen Study sought to reveal the importance of investigating the health-related risk-taking behaviors of youth by gathering data across various social contexts such as the participants’ families, friends, and schools (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 972). Countless critics had condemned the study by suggesting that the issue of teen sex behaviors had been studied insurmountably (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 973).

Statistics from the Center for Disease control (1991) show that the age of young American girls’ first intercourse began to decrease from the years 1985-1989. It was found that a number of Massachusetts teens that had reported on engaging in sexual intercourse had increased from 55% to 61% between the years 1986-1988. Moreover, it was found that the utilization of condoms by teenagers may decrease when they have multiple sexual partners (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 975). The authors (1993) state that the mathematical theory of epidemics reveals two factors about the rate of increasing infections during an epidemic: the first is the probability of an uninfected person contracting aids from an infected person. The transmission of a sexually-transmitted disease such as HIV will depend on the sexual behaviors of individuals, their personal safety practices when engaging in sexual intercourse, and how often they are in contact with sexual partners (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 976). The second factor about the rate of increasing infections is the number of uninfected individuals that are in the population. At the beginning of an epidemic, a sexually-transmitted disease spreads when the uninfected partner of an infected person becomes highly sexually-active within the population, which leads to an increase in the amount of those infected. As this population becomes more infected, an infected person will be less likely to encounter an uninfected one, which then leads to a decline in new infections; however, although the rate of new infections of HIV among older gay males has decreased, it is dangerous to say that the same pattern has been observed for gay adolescents (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 976). Similarly, data suggests that heterosexual adolescents also engage in anal intercourse which can lead to an increase in the number of infected persons. 10% of women at an adolescent planning center, 19% of female Canadian college students, and 25% of Black and Hispanic women at a family planning center all reported engaging in anal-intercourse with their partners (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 975).

The statistics shown suggest that there is indeed an increasing need for research on the sexual risk-behaviors of adolescents (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 976). The current research on adolescent risk-taking sexual behaviors seem to be lacking three fundamentals conditions that would give sufficient and generalizable data on the current sexual-behaviors of adolescents. The first is that the research studies need to have large samples and thorough designs to cover the diverse populations of adolescents that range from various genders, sexual orientations, ethnicities, races, and cultures (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 976). Second, there needs to be research that studies the interaction between various social contexts and adolescent sexual-behaviors that leave youth susceptible to engaging in sexual-intercourse. From social contexts such as riding in cars for enjoyment with one another to other opportunities for sexual encounters, the research should study the various ways that adolescents are exposed to sex. And lastly, it would be necessary for repeated longitudinal studies on the behaviors of adolescents throughout the years as behaviors are constantly changing and may be open to varying interpretations (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 977). The American Teen Study would have been utilized to conduct the type of research that would be needed to investigate the increasing rate of sexually-transmitted diseases among adolescents (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 977). The authors (1993) suggest that the cancellation of The American Teen Study was politically motivated as evidenced by Louis Sullivan’s rushed rejection of the study without providing adequate reasoning for why the study should not take have taken place. Without data from the study, it can be difficult for scientists to monitor the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases such as HIV and to develop techniques to decrease the rate of increasing infections (Gardner & Wilcox, 1993, p. 977).