I've never thought highly of abstinence pledges. I mean, a pledge requires a person to put rational thought over emotion which is not something teenagers are known to be good at.
How many kids "pledge" not to try drugs? Or "pledge" to always do their chores? Or "pledge" to be home at a certain hour? All these are examples of weaker temptations than sex and teenagers still break them.
That said, I'm weary of these results being this researcher clearly has an agenda (she's written about the topic several times now and keeps a related blog). I've found statisticians who go into a survey wanting to draw a specific conclusion tend to draw that conclusion regardless of whether it's true or not. Especially when their sample size is so small.
Research has shown that abstinence doesn't really work so well. There was a study that showed that abstinence only sex-ed lead to no change in the median initial age for sex.
In fact, abstinence education has led to a rise in anal sex among straight teens (it's not real sex, and is perfectly safe).
It's silly to try to moderate or influence sexual behaviour of animals, and it's unethical to try to restrain natural animal behaviour. If you see a primate of prime mating age priming to mate, get out of the way and let them do their thing.
The only time we should step in is when other things we invent cause this behaviour, in which case it becomes unnatural. For example, alcohol or drugs.
How many kids "pledge" not to try drugs? Or "pledge" to always do their chores? Or "pledge" to be home at a certain hour? All these are examples of weaker temptations than sex and teenagers still break them.
That said, I'm weary of these results being this researcher clearly has an agenda (she's written about the topic several times now and keeps a related blog). I've found statisticians who go into a survey wanting to draw a specific conclusion tend to draw that conclusion regardless of whether it's true or not. Especially when their sample size is so small.