HCS 465 Week 4 Evaluating The Research Process

Evaluating the Research Process of Teen Pregnancy
Amanda Siler
HCS 465
November 24, 2014
Mr. Dalton Douglas
Evaluating the Research Process

The following paper will address the research process of teen pregnancy. During the years of the adolescent years it is all about knowing yourself, getting used to the changes of your body, and most of all engaging in some sort of sexual activity or activities. Adolescent sexual activity and its consequences continue to be important policy concerns in the United States. Nationwide, nearly half of all high school students report having or had sex and one-fifth of the report having or had four or more partners by the time they graduate (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). The Evaluation of Adolescent Pregnancy and Prevention Approaches is a response to persistent concerns about the consequences of teen sexual activity. The Pregnancy Prevention Approaches evaluation is being undertaken to expand available evidence on effective ways to prevent and reduce pregnancy and related sexual risk behaviors among teens in the United States.

During this time of research, the evaluation is being conducted by Mathmatica Policy Research and its partners, Child Trends and Twin Peaks Partners LLC, under contract to the Office of Adolescent Health in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health of the U.S Department of Health and Human Resources which will document and rigorously test promising pregnancy prevention approaches in seven sites across the United States, which they will implement a different program. The evaluation has two components: an in-depth implementation analysis of the selected programs and a rigorously designed impact study of each program. The implementation analysis will document and examine the development, implementation, and operations of the selected programs. The impact studies will 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 purpose of this report is to describe the impact study component of the Pregnancy Prevention Approaches evaluation and during this report; it will provide an overview of the impact evaluation, selective programs, and the estimating impacts and reporting results.