Healthy Youth Development Prevention Research Center

At a North Minneapolis public school, the Center partners with County and youth center workers to provide school-based service learning. The Minneapolis Public Schools' Lead Peace program combines three curriculums creating a wealth of ready-to-use resources for serving learning facilitators at the school.

The HYD•PRC is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Prevention Research Centers Program, which supports research centers at 33 universities across the country to combat chronic disease by creating and testing interventions.

University Contact:
Mark Mahon
612-625-6185
mmahon@umn.edu

Minnesota Parent Survey Indicates Support for
Medically Accurate Sex Education in Schools

Survey of parents across Minnesota indicates broad support for teaching
pregnancy prevention and reproductive health to school students.

            Minneapolis, Minn. (March 17, 2008)—A new survey of Minnesota parents indicates overwhelming support for medically accurate and comprehensive sex education – which includes reproductive health and pregnancy prevention topics – in school. The survey was conducted by the University of Minnesota’s Healthy Youth Development-Prevention Research Center (Department of Pediatrics) in collaboration with the Center for Adolescent Nursing. Nine out of ten parents in the state-wide survey believe sex education in schools should include information about pregnancy prevention, reproductive health, sexually transmitted disease (STD) prevention while also encouraging students not to have sex. “Support for comprehensive sex education in schools was strong and consistent across all types of Minnesota parents. It didn’t matter where they lived, how much education they’d had, what their income level, faith or political orientation was – a large majority of Minnesota parents want their children to receive this information in school,” says Dr. Marla Eisenberg, assistant professor in Pediatrics and Adolescent Health at the University of Minnesota and lead investigator for the study.
            The results of the parent study become even more important with a just-released CDC study which found one in four teenage girls in the U.S., ages 14 to 19, had a sexually-transmitted infection. “Research about what works to delay a young person’s first sexual experience and help prevent unintended pregnancy and STDs is consistent with what Minnesota parents want,” says Dr. Michael Resnick, professor and director of the Healthy Youth Development-Prevention Research Center at the University of Minnesota. “Minnesota is poised to ensure that all young people get the information they need to stay healthy – we know which sex education programs work." In Minnesota, schools do not have dedicated state funding for sex education, no statewide instruction standards, and sex education is not required for high school graduation. "Yet," stated Dr. Linda Bearinger, professor and director of the Center for Adolescent Nursing in the University's School of Nursing, "we have all the capacity that we need to be offering high quality, medically accurate sex education to all young people.  We have remarkably skilled health teachers and a Department of Education that really understands how to effectively train health teachers.”  
     
            The survey data of 1,605 parents sought an equal geographic representation from the eight congressional districts of Minnesota. Some other findings from the random telephone survey conducted between September 2006 and March 2007 include -

• 98% of parents believe that sex education should inform students about reasons to not have sex.
• 95% of parents believe that sex education should provide information about STDs.
• 92% of parents believe sex education should include information on pregnancy and birth.
• 81% of parents think that sex education does not cause more students to have sex.

            Results from this study are currently available online and will be published as Marla E. Eisenberg, Sc.D., M.P.H., Debra H. Bernat, Ph.D., Linda H. Bearinger, Ph.D. and Michael D. Resnick, Ph.D., Support for comprehensive sexuality education: Perspectives from parents of school-age youth, in Journal of Adolescent Health, April 2008.

            The Healthy Youth Development-Prevention Research Center, housed in the University of Minnesota-Department of Pediatrics (Medical School), in partnership with the Center for Adolescent Nursing (School of Nursing) and the School of Public Health, collaborates with community-based youth serving organizations and public health agencies to promote youth development through research, training, and advocacy. The Healthy Youth Development-Prevention Research Center is one of 33 academic centers funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention whose main objective is to link science to practice.

For more information about the Healthy Youth Development-Prevention Research Center
and staff contact information, visit www.prc.umn.edu.

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Parents Attitudes about Sex Education

In 2007, the Healthy Youth Development • Prevention Research Center conducted a telephone survey to record parental attitudes about sex education in schools. This telephone survey included 1,605 Minnesota parents from every congressional district in the state.

A substantial majority of parents surveyed believe that young people should be taught in school how to prevent pregnancy and disease while also being encouraged not to have sex. And this belief was shared by strong majorities of Minnesota parents — no matter what their location, religious belief, political affiliation, education or income level.



Click on the links below to learn more about the survey findings.

What do parents thing about sex education, abbreviated version, complete version.