Diocese of Evansville
Purdue researcher: Peer pressure has positive outcome
Luke Costlow, a senior at Mater Dei High School in Evansville.
By Paul R. Leingang (Message editor)
When some students from Reitz Memorial High School in Evansville came to talk with the students at Good Shepherd Elementary School in Evansville a few years ago, sixth-grader Matt Martin was impressed.
The Memorial students, who said they would wait until marriage to have sex, “were very multi-talented,” Martin said. He looked up to them.
This year, Martin is a junior at Memorial, and he is one of the students who serve as mentors for younger students. He recently went to give witness to his convictions to a middle school youth group in Santa Claus.
“They were pretty receptive,” Martin said. “I think we probably made an impact on what they were thinking.”
Martin spoke Feb. 4 to a group of educators and students who met at the Southern Indiana Career and Technical Center in Evansville to learn more about the impact of peers on student attitudes toward sex and character.
Luke Costlow, a senior at Mater Dei High School in Evansville, said he wanted to give a good example to younger students, including his younger brother.
The main presentation was given by Karis Pallone, a Purdue researcher who is working toward her doctorate. She and Kenneth F. Ferraro performed two studies of 1,000 students in the Indianapolis area during the 2006-2007 school year. They wanted to find out the impact of “Peers Educating Peers about Positive Values” or PEP for short — which is a program organized by “Peers Educating and Encouraging Res-ponsible Sexuality.”
“Peers Educating and Encouraging Responsible Sexuality” — or The PEERS Project for short — is a non-profit organization located in Indianapolis, with school programs in 31 Indiana counties.
PEERS “relies on high-school age mentors to work with students ages 12 to 18 to make them aware of the consequences of sex before marriage and the value of saving sex for marriage,” according to the ex-ecutive summary of the studies undertaken by Farraro and Pallone.
Among their findings are the following:
- Sixth-grade students who received PEP were 15.21 percent more likely than students who did not receive PEP to be committed to abstinence.
- Sixth-grade students who received PEP and were initially uncommitted to abstinence were nearly four times more likely to be committed to abstinence following the PEP program.
- 92.5 percent of parents have spoken to their children about saving sex for marriage.
- 93.4 percent of parents who say they heard about The PEERS Project from their children, also report having spoken to their children about abstinence.
According to the researchers, “These studies demonstrate that PEP is effective in helping sixth-grade students make abstinence decisions and that most parents who have heard about The PEERS Project have also spoken to their children about abstinence.”
The researchers began by asking all students in the study group about their attitudes and convictions. Then half of them received PEP, the presentation involving peers and positive values, the type of experience Matt Martin described at Good Shepherd and at Santa Claus.
Then a second study was done, to see how the PEP group compared with the non-PEP group. (The non-PEP group also experienced the peer presentations, but only after the second study was done.)
The comparison of the convictions and attitudes of the two groups was the basis for the statistical presentation. (No behavioral studies were done; no questions were asked about sexual activity.)
Of the males who participated, 60 percent said they were committed to abstinence. After the PEP experience, 75 percent of the males said they were committed to abstinence. Of the females who participated, the percentage went up from 76 to 90 percent.
The researchers concluded “that students who received PEP were more likely to agree with sexual responsibility items, have favorable attitudes toward abstinence, and express that they are committed to saving sex until marriage.”
Schools that provide the PEERS program in southwestern Indiana include:
- All Warrick County junior high and high schools
- South Spencer High School and Middle School
- North Posey High School and Junior High
- Gibson Southern High School, and Owensville Elemen-tary, Haubstadt Elementary, Fort Branch Elementary and St. James Catholic School
- Princeton High School and Middle School
- Mater Dei and Memorial Catholic high schools and their respective feeder schools.
(Go to the website of the Diocese of Evansville) †