Introduction
The Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) grant program—a federally funded adolescent pregnancy prevention initiative administered by the Administration for Children and Families, Family and Youth Services Bureau—teaches youth how to voluntarily refrain from non-marital sexual activity. The program was first funded by Congress through a discretionary grant program in 2016 (General Departmental grant recipients) and through the reauthorization of Title V in 2018 (Title V State and Title V Competitive grant recipients). This report reflects SRAE programming offered by grant recipients, providers, and facilitators who had SRAE funding and were delivering SRAE programming at the time of survey administration during the 2022—2023 school year.
Purpose
This report is an initial attempt to explore whether and how SRAE program implementation is associated with youth outcomes and attendance. It includes an investigation of the association of aspects of implementation (an extensive set of implementation features and provider characteristics) with youth survey outcomes related to improved skills, intentions, and satisfaction with SRAE programming, as well as program attendance.
Key Findings and Highlights
- Implementation features related to program setting (whether in a school or a non-school setting, prevalence of issues and experiences in the community, and age of youth that the providers serve) and program content (topics covered and curriculum used) had moderate or strong associations with youth outcomes.
- For most facilitation characteristics, the study found only small associations with youth outcomes. Also, for two of the characteristics with moderate associations (facilitator's previous experience teaching SRAE and number of topics that facilitator received training on), the direction of the associations was unexpectedly negative. On the other hand, strategies facilitators used to engage youth and having work-related connections with the community they serve had moderate, positive associations with some youth outcomes.
- Providers who were newer to SRAE programming and those who had received a Title V State subrecipient grant were associated with moderately better outcomes for youth than more experienced providers and other types of grant recipients. Associations involving provider efforts to support facilitators through training and observations and youth outcomes were generally small or inconsistent.
- The association of most implementation features and provider characteristics with youth outcomes was generally small.
Methods
This study draws on data from surveys of providers and facilitators, as well as administrative performance measures submitted by grant recipients. The primary analysis and sensitivity testing uses a regression modeling approach. To provide context to these findings, the study team then assesses the strength of evidence with Bayesian methods that account for findings across models (and in some cases Bayesian findings differed from the primary findings). Notably, the study design does not lend itself to causal interpretation; the findings do not indicate whether a specific implementation feature causes better or worse student outcomes.
Citation
Inanc, Hande, Christopher Jones, and Emily Sama-Miller. “Which Sexual Risk Avoidance Education Implementation Features and Provider Characteristics are Associated with Youth Outcomes?” OPRE Report #335. Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023.