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Teen Outreach Program "TOP", 21st Century Community Learning Center
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Approach
Out of School/ Summer Mentoring Tutoring Counseling/ Therapy School-based Clinic/ Provider-based Service/
Vocational learning		 Parent or family component Other
x x   x x x    

 

Outcomes
Educational/ Cognitive Social/ Emotional Life Skills Physical Health Behavior Problems Reproductive Citizenship Mental Health
x x x  

 

Background Information Program size

Age range

 Research Program Fee?
Contact information:
West Las Vegas Schools
179 Bridge St.
Las Vegas, NM 87701-3426

Mission/Goals: TOP is a youth development and service-learning program designed to prevent teen pregnancy by challenging participants to help others through community service, clarify their values, breakdown stereotypes, and increase their sense of worth.

Notes: The Service Organization for Youth, Inc. (SOY) program in Raton, NW also provides a teen pregnancy program using the TOP curriculum.		 There are 40 children in the program for Fall 2004 Students in the 6th,7th, and 8th grades Please click here for more information on this evaluation.

Type of Evaluation: Quasi-experimental

Objective: To monitor changes in attitude, knowledge, and behavior among program participants in the outcome areas listed below.

Impact/Outcomes: Students in the TOP program and comparison group had similar attitudes about the youngest age that they could imagine having a first child and the best age to have a first child. There was no significant change in these attitudes between the first and last assessment. Regarding sexual activity, only 11% percent of TOP students (all males, all Hispanic) had had sex at the first assessment and this did not change by the second assessment. The percentage of comparison group students who had sex changed from 17% to 22% percent between the first and second assessments and these sexually active students were about 64% male and 80% Hispanic. At the first assessment 7 males and 4 females had had sex and 3 additional males had sex by the last assessment. The average age of first intercourse for the TOP students was 13.5 and was 12.6 for the comparison group. Only 1 out of 3 TOP participants reported contraceptive use consistently every time he had had sex in the past six months. In the comparison group, 3 out of 11 participants reported using some form of birth control "most of the time" or "every time" that they had sex in the last 6 months. One of the sexually-active males in the TOP group
reported causing a pregnancy and had a child at the first assessment and no additional pregnancies or children were reported at the last assessment. Among the comparison students, one male reported having caused a pregnancy and having a child at the first assessment and between the first and last assessment, one of the sexually active females reported getting pregnant. Between the two assessments, TOP students reported improvement in 2 out of 4 school-related behaviors. They had an increase in school suspensions, however. Comparison students reported a slight improvement in one school-related behavior and an increase in four out of five risky behaviors.

Students are provided a stipend which ranges between 0 and $25 in the first month and can increase to $50 per month.
   

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