High school students' long-term retention of sex education information

Ninth grade students in a rural South Carolina school were pretested about sexuality information, completed a 12-unit reproductive health course in eight months, and were posttested. A control group received the same pretest and posttest. Both groups were retested after the 10th and 11th grades and mean scores were calculated and compared. The difference between the experimental group's pretest and posttest mean scores was 8.49 (p less than .001); the difference between the control group's pretest and posttest mean scores was 1.0 (p = .003). The experimental group's mean score remained at least 5.2 points higher (p less than .001) than the control group's score on the same test one and two years after the course. Comparison of the mean gain between the pretest and posttest scores, and between the pretest and fourth test scores, confirmed the results obtained by mean test scores. The test scores indicated that the knowledge of the experimental students increased significantly and was sustained for two years. Their scores remained significantly higher than those of the control group on the posttest, and on tests one and two years later.