In an ongoing study, Texas A&M University researchers found that students in nearly all high school grades throughout Texas were more sexually active after participating in abstinence-only sex education programs. The programs did not encourage teen sex; rather, researchers believe the abstinence messages did not interrupt expected adolescent sexual trends.

The study findings were based on 10-page questionnaires filled out anonymously by junior and high school students from more than two-dozen schools engaged in five different programs.

"We didn't find what many would like for us to find," said A&M researcher Buzz Pruitt, who met with state health officials recently to discuss the findings. Pruitt warned against making overreaching conclusions based on the study, which is incomplete. There is no comparison group, so researchers cannot say whether teen sex rates would have been even higher without abstinence-only programs.

Of the ninth-grade girls studied, about 23 percent had already had sexual intercourse -- a figure below the national average -- prior to their abstinence-only program enrollment. After taking the abstinence courses, that rate grew to 28 percent, close to the state average. Rates of sexual activity grew for 10th-grade boys, from 24 percent before program exposure to 39 percent after taking the course. No changes in rates of sexual activity were noted among ninth-grade boys in the programs.

Scientists hailed the study for providing data to a field lacking it. Texas and nearly a dozen states have evaluated their abstinence programs.

Interim data from a $4.5 million per-year federal study on abstinence programs were supposed to have been released previously but remain unpublished. A final report is due in 2006, said Harry Wilson, associate commissioner of the federal Family and Youth Services Bureau.

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