According to a new study teenagers who take virginity pledges are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who don’t take the pledge.  The study published in the journal Pediatrics, also highlighted the fact that this group was more likely to not use condoms or any other form of birth control when they did have sex.

The study used data from a large federal survey collected by the federal government's National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which gathered detailed information from a representative sample of about 11,000 students in grades seven through 12 in 1995, 1996 and 2001. The researchers reported that more than half of the youth became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a virginity pledge or not. The study found that those who had pledged to abstain from premarital sex were 10 % less likely to take precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases as compared to non pledgers.

Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said, "This study came about because somebody who decides to take a virginity pledge tends to be different from the average American teenager. The pledgers tend to be more religious. They tend to be more conservative. They tend to be less positive about sex. There are some striking differences. So comparing pledgers to all non-pledgers doesn't make a lot of sense."

In this study, researchers compared the sexual behavior of 289 teenagers who reported taking a virginity pledge in a 1996 national survey to 645 non-pledgers.  Both the groups were matched on more than 100 factors, such as religious beliefs and attitudes toward sex and birth control. "Previous studies would compare a mixture of apples and oranges," Rosenbaum said. "I tried to pull out the apples and compare only the apples to other apples."

The interesting points noted by the researchers were that 82% of pledgers denied ever having taken the pledge. In the rates of premarital sex, sexually transmitted disease, and oral and anal sex behaviors there was no difference seen in pledgers and matched non-pledgers.

The study showed that although pledgers had 0.1 fewer sexual partners in the past year they did not differ from non-pledgers in the number of lifetime sexual partners and the age of first sex. The biggest difference was seen in the use of contraception with fewer pledgers using birth control or condoms in the past year or any form of birth control the last time they had sex.

A whopping $176 million is spent annually on abstinence promotion including virginity pledges and this study has opened up Pandora’s Box on this issue once again. "This study again raises the issue of why the federal government is continuing to invest in abstinence-only programs," said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "What have we gained if we only encourage young people to delay sex until they are older, but then when they do become sexually active -- and most do well before marriage -- they don't protect themselves or their partners?"

Taking the other side of the argument Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association said, "It is remarkable that an author who employs rigorous research methodology would then compromise those standards by making wild, ideologically tainted and inaccurate analysis regarding the content of abstinence education programs."

Rosenbaum concluded, "Taking a pledge doesn't seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior. But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking."