Research Paper on AHS's Opinion on Abortion Vs. Safe Sex Awareness
In this research project Animas High School students will be surveyed on their opinion on abortion versus their knowledge of safe sex and sex in general. Their knowledge of sex is relevant to their opinion because it seems as it may factor into the opinion of abortion if the subject knows how to prevent pregnancy. There are other surveys that state teen opinions on abortion being fairly constant throughout the US and not effected greatly by some factors. If students who have an adequate knowledge of safe sex share an opinion about abortion, then a correlation can be said to exist between knowledge of safe sex and opinion about abortion. Having adequate knowledge of safe sex will be defined as subjects who are able to answer 80% or more questions about sexual interactions correctly.
A school-wide survey via ConstantContact.com will be conducted to test the hypotheses and find out what Animas High Schoolers really know or think. The survey will address other factors such as parents and the media influencing their opinion and will test their knowledge of safe sex for comparison to the results of the abortion survey questions. The materials I will need are essentially time for each student to be surveyed, and computers for each student to be surveyed. The students being surveyed is a mix of ninth and tenth graders at AHS.
In the results there seem to be majority votes on one way or another for almost every question. The majority opinion on abortion seems to be that Animas High Schoolers think abortion should be legal with certain restrictions to justify each patient. Only a small amount more than 10% of students thought abortion should be illegal under all circumstances and even less had no opinion. about 30% of Animas High Schoolers have the opinion that abortion should be legal without any restrictions. Only about 15% of Animas High Schoolers answered the question regarding the percent of abortions being a method of birth control, meaning the patient nor the baby is in danger of injury or death, correctly at 95% of abortions.
About 75-80% of AHS students answered 80% of the questions correctly, thus proving that there is no correlation between knowledge and awareness of safe sex and the subjects opinion on abortion.. About 20% of animas high schoolers were unsure of these questions, meaning that AHS should be obliged to teach their students Sex Ed. in the near future to most effectively have an aware school. Above 90% of AHS agreed with the questions regarding opinion on teen parent responsibility, the importance of birth control, and other pertaining topics. About half of AHS students did feel comfortable with talking to their parents about their sexual activity/choices and more felt comfortable with talking to their friends about their sexual choices/activity. About 88% of AHS students state being able to abstain from sex with out a condom or sex in general if they did not want to participate in these activities. The last question on the survey asked whether the subjects knew where to get tested for STDs/STIs if they had unprotected sex or shared a needle, and less than 50% were confident they would know of such a place. This is sure to be taught during the Sex Ed. course.
These results are not shocking because they seem to mimic the results of other alike surveys testing teens opinions on abortion. The most alike thing between my survey and others is the opinion that abortion should be legal with certain restrictions being the majority vote among teenagers in both my and other alike surveys. The majority of AHS students seem to be educated in the area of safe sex and sex in general from previously taken classes, thus proving the knowledge of safe sex does not necessarily prove knowledge changes your opinion, but most likely supports your argument.
Teens at Animas High do not seem to be blind to the subject of safe sex and abortion laws, and they have well crafted opinions on both abortions and safe sex that can not be captured by a survey. This survey also was a great help for the sex ed program soon to be coming to Animas High to better inform kids on sexual activity and safe sex.
