I am a member of the London Borough of Brent Teenage Pregnancy Advisory Board, so I look out for articles of posible relevance.
Articles that I review will tend to be biased towards the English language.
The Internet has a natural bias towards the USA.
I receive a Reuters News service - and saw this just now:
[Teen pregnancy linked to sexy TV shows: study
03 NOV 2008 07:06 GMT
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Exposure to some forms of entertainment is a corrupting influence on children, leading teens who watch sexy programs into early pregnancies and children who play violent video games to adopt aggressive behavior, researchers said on Monday. ]
Following through I find in the way of direct quotes from the main researcher the following:
"Our findings suggest that television may play a significant role in the high rates of teenage pregnancy in the United States," and "We're not saying we're establishing causation, but we are saying this is one factor that we were able to prospectively link to the teen pregnancy outcome,"
Note, as I know you will, the words 'may' and 'prospectively' and 'United States' in the above quotes not to mention, but I will, 'We're not saying we're establishing causation...'
Given the big news story around in the next couple of days - fingers crossed for having the 1st President with a vowel (aeiou) at the end of their surname {shouldn't say that sort of thing here, should I? } - maybe this won't get much coverage today in the UK or the USA. I am fairly certain though that it will get a mention, if not a whole program sometime soon on daytime TV, and the unqualified claim will be:
Sexy TV shows responsible for teen pregnancies.
What to do? What to do?
Was it ever thus?
Field of Science
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Ugh. It's hard to know who to blame for this. The researchers claim an association (correlation) and imply causation by their language. Reuters fails to explain the holes in logic and evidence.
ReplyDeleteWe need to knock it on the head if its reported.
The study does control for other factors (abstract available here: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/122/5/1047) But the bottom line is we can't know whether kids who are more inclined to get pregnant also seek out programmes with sexual content.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if those kids had been given proper sex education and access to contraception, they wouldn't accidentally get pregnant no matter what telly they watched.
The abstract says they "controlled for other known correlates of exposure to sexual content and pregnancy." but doesn't say which they were. We might guess at race, income and education of parents. Possibly whether their mothers had been teenage mothers.
ReplyDeleteI agree that better sex ed and access to contraception would reduce the incidence of pregnancy - good evidence from eg Netherlands. Of course, some might actually have wanted to get pregnant!
Yet more science being misinterpreted by the media...
ReplyDelete