Initiative Components

Abstinence education is a growing field. Our staff is available to assist you with curriculum selection, program and evaluation design, and information about funding sources. We have designed this web site so that much of this information is available to you here. If there is additional information you need please contact us for technical assistance.

This effort is in the planning stages. It is our goal to assist localities in developing grassroots collaborative efforts to promote sexual abstinence and the interconnectedness of risk behaviors. We envision a network of local, collaborative efforts throughout the state.

We recognize that many localities already have coalitions that are addressing adolescent risk taking behaviors such as the Better Beginnings Teenage Pregnancy Prevention and the Right Choices for Youth Coalitions. Any grassroots coalition that is already promoting risk avoidance strategies can join the network. We plan to begin developing the CAEC in the fall of this year.

Social Marketing Campaign

In the past years we have successfully implemented the NOT ME, NOT NOW campaign developed in Rochester, NY. Our current plans are to develop Virginia specific marketing products. We are currently developing our first product that is a parent tool kit. This will be a tool designed to not only assist parents in talking with their children about human development, sexuality and relationships but will also help parents relay pertinent information to other parents.

For more information about the NOT ME, NOT NOW campaign visit www.notmenotnow.org .

Evaluation

History

The Virginia Abstinence Education Initiative is a multi-component effort to implement new approaches that will help adolescents develop the attitudes and skills necessary to delay sexual involvement until marriage, and to evaluate systematically the effectiveness of those approaches. Unlike many of the evaluation of abstinence education efforts around the country both past and present, systematic evaluation of the program was built into the Virginia Abstinence Education Initiative (VAEI) from the very beginning. Due to the criticisms of abstinence education programs, the VAEI established two priorities: 1) adequate funding to support strong program design and integrity of program implementation and 2) adequate funding to support formative and summative program evaluation.

Consequently, the Virginia Department of Health (VDH), who has the responsibility for VAEI program administration, built evaluation expectations into its Request for Proposals. In addition, VDH established an Evaluation Consortium comprised of faculty from four public universities in Virginia with expertise in program evaluation and one national expert on the evaluation of abstinence education programs. The Evaluation Consortium provides technical assistance to local program sites, provides guidance around the design of data collection and evaluation methodology, and data analyses and interpretation. VDH has also subcontracted with the Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory (SERL) at Virginia Commonwealth University to design and implement a data reporting system to support evaluation and monitoring activities.

Design

A quasi-experimental, longitudinal program evaluation design is used to measure program impact and effectiveness. This design allows for the capturing of both long and short-term changes. Additionally, in order to attribute any change to the program's activities, the same survey is also administered to a comparison group within two weeks of the participant administrations. Both participant and comparison groups are tracked and an annual survey is administered each subsequent year. This quasi-experimental design helps to insure that any changes noted pre-to-post program could be attributed to the intervention and not due to normal maturation or other events that may happen in the environment. The longitudinal and quasi-experimental nature of the design creates a rather complex but rich source of data.

Overview

The VAEI evaluation system is comprised of both formative and summative evaluation components. Data for the VAEI evaluation system is collected using the following five tools:

•  Quarterly Implementation Progress Reports (QIPRs): The QIPR serves as a qualitative report on each program's activities and barriers related to achieving the overall program goals. The QIPR is used to record the history of the program, including any events that occur in the school or community that may influence the participants in the program.

•  Community Education Information Reports (CEIRs): The CEIR serves as a way to capture basic information on activities and audiences that are very diverse in nature. Community education is defined as a one-time or short-term program where it is impractical or unfeasible to capture attendance data (or for short series of sessions where there is no expectation that the same participants will return for each session).

•  Intervention Project Attendance Reports (IPARs): Intervention projects are defined as projects where there is an expectation that individuals will be "enrolled" into a planned approach or curriculum that includes multiple contacts where the information in each subsequent session builds upon information that has been covered previously.

•  Survey of Youth Attitudes and Behaviors: the purpose of the survey is to capture the attitudes and behaviors of youth related to marriage, sex, and sexual abstinence. This questionnaire is administered to all participants at the first or second session (pre-) and at the final session (post-) to assess the level of impact of the program's activities. The questionnaire is also administered to program participants annually over the course of program funding (longitudinal design). This longitudinal design allows for the capturing of both long and short-term changes.

We are currently analyzing the data collected and preparing research reports and articles for submission to peer reviewed journals.

Virginia Abstinence Education Initiative Evaluation Consortium Members

Virginia Department of Health Staff

Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory Staff

Local Program Evaluators