Constantine Norman A, Jerman Petra, Huang Alice X
Center for Research on Adolescent Health and Development, Public Health Institute, Oakland, CA, and University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Perspect Sex Reprod Health. 2007 Sep;39(3):167-75. doi: 10.1363/3916707.
Policy debates over the merits of abstinence-only versus comprehensive approaches to sex education are ongoing, despite well-documented public support for comprehensive sex education. Although parents are key stakeholders in the outcomes of these debates, their views have been less thoroughly considered.
A random digit dial survey of 1,284 California parents was conducted in 2006. Parents were asked about their sex education policy preferences, the importance of teaching selected topics at different grade levels and reasons for their preferences. Cross-tabulations and odds ratios were used to assess regional and other subgroup differences.
Overall, 89% of parents reported a preference for comprehensive sex education, and 11% for abstinence-only education. Support for comprehensive sex education was high in all regions (87-93%) and across all subgroup characteristics: race or ethnicity (79-92%), age (86-94%), education (84-93%), household income (87-92%), religious affiliation (86-91%), religious service attendance (69-96%) and ideological leaning (71-96%). Four types of reasons for preferences emerged: those focused on the consequences of actions, on the importance of providing complete information, on the inevitability of adolescents' engaging in sex and on religious or purity-based morality concerns. While 64% of abstinence-only supporters cited the last type (absolutist reasons), 94% of comprehensive sex education supporters cited one of the first three (pragmatic reasons).
The high levels of support for comprehensive sex education across California's diverse regions and demographic subgroups suggest that such support may be generalizable to communities and school districts both in California and around the country. Furthermore, ideological differences might be less important to the sex education debates than the distinction between pragmatic and absolutist perspectives.
尽管有充分的证据表明公众支持全面性教育，但关于仅强调禁欲的性教育方法与全面性教育方法孰优孰劣的政策辩论仍在继续。虽然父母是这些辩论结果的关键利益相关者，但他们的观点却较少得到充分考虑。
2006年对1284名加利福尼亚州的父母进行了随机数字拨号调查。询问父母他们对性教育政策的偏好、在不同年级教授选定主题的重要性以及他们偏好的原因。使用交叉表和优势比来评估地区和其他亚组差异。
总体而言，89%的父母表示更喜欢全面性教育，11%的父母更喜欢仅强调禁欲的教育。在所有地区（87%-93%）以及所有亚组特征中，对全面性教育的支持率都很高：种族或族裔（79%-92%）、年龄（86%-94%）、教育程度（84%-93%）、家庭收入（87%-92%）、宗教信仰（86%-91%）、参加宗教仪式的频率（69%-96%）以及意识形态倾向（71%-96%）。出现了四种偏好原因：关注行为后果、提供完整信息的重要性、青少年发生性行为的不可避免性以及基于宗教或纯洁性的道德担忧。虽然64%的仅强调禁欲教育的支持者提到了最后一种类型（绝对主义原因），但94%的全面性教育支持者提到了前三种类型中的一种（务实原因）。
加利福尼亚州不同地区和人口亚组对全面性教育的高度支持表明，这种支持可能适用于加利福尼亚州乃至全国的社区和学区。此外，在性教育辩论中，意识形态差异可能不如务实观点与绝对主义观点之间的区别重要。
