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Evaluation of Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Approaches

The Evaluation of Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Approaches (PPA) is a major federal effort to expand available evidence on effective ways to prevent and reduce pregnancy and related sexual risk behaviors among teens in the United States. The eight-year (2008-2016) evaluation is documenting and testing promising pregnancy prevention approaches in seven sites across the United States, each of which will implement a different program.

The program models selected for evaluation are:

• Chicago HealthTeacher, a general health education curriculum with a comprehensive sex education component, carried out in Chicago Public Schools.
  
  
• Gender Matters, a week-long intensive curriculum that focuses on gender roles, being implemented with youth involved in summer employment programs in Texas.
  
  
• An adapted version of WAIT Training, an abstinence-until-marriage curriculum developed by the Center for Relationship Education, carried out in middle schools in Florida through 16 class sessions across two years
  
  
• Teen PEP, peer-led comprehensive sex education workshops implemented in North Carolina and New Jersey high schools
  
  
• AIM for 4 Teen Moms, an adapted version of Project AIM (Adult Identity Mentoring), that provides  home-based educational sessions and group support for pregnant and parenting teens in Los Angeles, California
  
  
• T.O.P.P., an 18-month intervention that provides telephone-based care coordination, motivational interviewing, and access to family-planning services for pregnant and parenting teens in Columbus, Ohio
  
  
• Power Through Choices, a group-based sex education program targeting foster care youth in group homes in three states (Oklahoma, California, and Maryland)

The PPA evaluation has two components: (1) a rigorously designed impact study of the seven selected programs and (2) an in-depth implementation analysis of each program. The impact studies use experimental designs and longitudinal survey data in all sites and focus on assessing the effectiveness of each selected program on its own, compared to a control group in the same site. The implementation analyses examine the context and delivery of each program and provide a basis for interpreting estimates of program impacts.

The evaluation is related to recent federal efforts focused on preventing risky sexual behavior and pregnancy among adolescents, including the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Initiative and the Personal Responsibility Education Innovative Strategies (PREIS) programs. Six of the seven programs in the PPA evaluation are being implemented by local organizations with TPP or PREIS grant funding. In these six sites, the PPA evaluation team is collaborating closely with the independent local evaluators, funded as part of each TPP or PREIS grant, on the design and implementation of the PPA impact and implementation studies.

For each of the seven evaluation sites, the PPA evaluation team will produce an implementation report, an interim impact report, and a final impact analysis report. These reports will address key evaluation questions, synthesize findings from the implementation and impact analyses, and provide interpretations of the findings that are useful and accessible to a broad audience. The reports will be released on a rolling basis from fall 2012 through fall 2016 as data collected is completed in each site.

Publications

"Balancing Fidelity and Flexibility: Implementing the Gen.M Program in Texas" (August 2013)
"Evaluation of Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Approaches: Design of the Impact Study" (October 2012)
"Making a Plan and Sticking to It: Implementing an Enhanced Version of HealthTeacher in Chicago" (September 2012)