Study Details
Boyer, C. B., Shafer, M. A., Shaffer, R. A., Brodine, S. K., Pollack, L. M., Betsinger, K., et al. (2005). Evaluation of a cognitive-behavioral, group, randomized controlled intervention trial to prevent sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies in young women. Preventive Medicine, 40(4), 420-31.
FOCUS
Program Information
Evaluation Setting
Study Sample
Research Design
2157
2
11
Study Findings
The program was evaluated in a cluster randomized controlled trial involving female Marine recruits who participated in the study during their first 13-week training period. Study participants were randomly assigned by platoon to either a treatment group that received the FOCUS intervention or a control group that received a health-promotion intervention on diet, physical activity, and cancer prevention. Surveys were administered immediately before the program (baseline) and at approximately one and eleven months after the program ended. Biological screening was conducted for pregnancy, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomonas.
The study found that 11 months after the program ended, participants in the intervention who were sexually inexperienced at baseline were significantly less likely to report having had multiple sexual partners since graduating from Marine recruit training. The study found no statistically significant program impacts on the number of sexual partners for participants who were sexually experienced at baseline, or on consistency of condom use for any group of study participants.
The study also examined program impacts on measures of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies. Findings for these outcomes were not considered for this review because they did not meet the review evidence standards. Specifically, findings were reported only for certain subgroups of study participants, depending on where they were deployed after completing Marine recruit training. Those findings may be biased if deployment decisions were nonrandom.
NA = Not available. This means the authors did not report the information in the manuscripts associated with the studies we reviewed.
a This information was not available whenever authors did not report information for the treatment and comparison groups separately on outcome means, standard deviations, and/or sample sizes.
b Authors reported that the program effect (impact) estimate is statistically significant with a p-value of less than 0.05 based on a two-tailed test.
c For some outcomes, having less of that outcome is favorable. In those cases, an effect with a negative sign is favorable to the treatment group (that is, the treatment group had a more favorable outcome than the comparison group, on average).
d An effect shows credibly estimated, statistically significant evidence whenever it has a p-value of less than 0.05 based on a two-tailed test, includes the appropriate adjustment for clustering (if applicable), and it is not based on an endogenous subgroup.