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By using the propensity score matching method, Rosenbaum was able to test whether taking a virginity pledge actually changes a person's sexual behavior, which is why her research is important. Previous research by professors Hannah Bruckner of Yale University and Peter Bearman of Columbia University used the same Add Health data in their 2001 article in the American Journal of Sociology (see also their research on STDs in 2005). They found that those who took a virginity pledge may (or may not) be less likely to have intercourse. If they did have sex, they were more likely to wait longer to do so. These studies also found that pledgers were less likely to use condoms and other birth control methods. In contrast, Rosenbaum's research provides a more rigorous test of the effects of taking a virginity pledge.

More recently, researchers from the RAND Corporation published a report in the October 2008 issue Journal of Adolescent Health, which found that virginity pledges delayed sexual intercourse and did not decrease the use of condom use when sex occurred. Like Rosenbaum, these researchers used propensity score matching. The differences in results are likely due to the use of a different data set. There are three differences that may be responsible for the different findings. The RAND survey includes adolescents as young as 12, while Add Health survey did not ask questions about views toward sex to adolescents under the age of 15. Rosenbaum's study asked about sexual relations five years after asking if the adolescent had taken a virginity pledge. Thus, the age of those in the study were 21 to 23 years of age when asked about their sexual behavior. The RAND study asked about sexual behavior one and three years later, which means the survey participants were 15 to 20 when asked about sexual behavior. This is an important difference, because Rosenbaum finds that the pledgers and their matched peers who did have sex did not do so until about age 21.

Not surprisingly, Rosenbaum's research has received national media attention because of its implications for debates over sex education. Proponents of abstinence-only education are critical of the study and emphasize that it does not examine sex education. Opponents praise it as an indictment of abstinence-only education because of the close ties between virginity pledge programs and abstinence-only education.

Regardless of its policy implications, these new findings should cause parents, teachers, and churches to pause before promoting a virginity pledge program. For the past decade and a half, churches have put forth an organized effort to encourage youth to take virginity pledges. Some of these include abstinence-first curriculum. Others are one-time events that offer teens platitudes in place of life skills. If a program offers only inconsequential rituals, we would be wise to spend our time and money elsewhere. U.S. News & World Report's Health Editor Bernadine Healy gave a recommendation to parents: "The focus should be on cultivating the teenager's ongoing home and social environment, rather than on eliciting a one-time, easily-forgotten promise." Those who believe that "true love waits" can't consider a teen merely signing a virginity pledge a fait accompli. As True Love Waits spokesman Jimmy Hester told The New York Times in 2004, ''Signing a pledge card does not mean you are magically protected.''

Tobin Grant is an associate professor of political science at Southern Illinois University — Carbondale. He is coauthor of Expression vs. Equality: The Politics of Campaign Finance Reform and dozens of academic articles on politics and religion.

Note: For clarity, the title and deck of this article have been changed since the article first appeared.

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January (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53