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Sex ed best taught like math, researcher of teen behavior says -- build on the basics
By Jodi Mitchell
Brent Miller has made a career of studying teen sexual behavior. "Teen pregnancy is not acceptable," he says, and the goal of several federally funded programs is to cut the teen pregnancy rates by one third by the year 2005./ Photo by Michael Hamblin Editor's note: This story was produced for the USU mass communication class "Beyond the Inverted Pyramid," COMM 3110. It is one of a series on USU professors who are experts in their field, or world-class creators or performers. Sexual behaviors. Adolescent attitudes. Pregnancy prevention. Those are just a few of the things that family and human development department head Dr. Brent Miller studies in his spare time. Once a boy growing up in Logan, now a top researcher of adolescent sexual behaviors, Miller sits behind his 5-by-3 mahogany desk in his Family Life Room 211 office. Wearing olive green cords and a red, white and green plaid, long-sleeved shirt, Miller discusses family life issues with a colleague. His computer rests idly behind him, a file cabinet stands conveniently next to it, and a book shelf full of "family issues" books occupies the greater part of an adjacent wall. Miller recently wrote an autobiography titled Mountains, Mormonism, Marriage and Family. According to the book, he has been researching teen-age sexual behaviors since 1981. He gained an interest in that subject about 10 years after graduation from Weber State University, where he received a bachelor's in science. Miller finished school in Ogden and entered the graduate program at Utah State University, where he received his master's degree in 1972. Three years later, he obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota. He later spent a summer at the University of Michigan and enrolled in a summer program in quantitative methods in 1987 on a sabbatical leave. In a recent interview, Miller explained that his training had been mostly academic and theoretical. He was eager to study something of practical concern that would be of use to the public. He had narrowed his choices to adolescent sexual behaviors and child abuse. The sex won. His goal is to understand human behavior and family relationships. While
the families talked more In the 1980s he became the evaluation researcher of a project designed to prevent teen-age pregnancy, according to his autobiography. The project, sponsored by the federal Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs, encouraged youth to practice sexual abstinence, which means to refrain from sex, and turned out to be not very effective. Miller believes the ineffectiveness was due to weak interventions and a limited budget allotted for research. He doesn't feel that the research was a waste as he was able to compile many works corresponding with the project that illustrate the link between family and individual characteristics and youthful sexual experiences. For instance, a child who has been abused by a family member is more likely to have sex at an earlier age than a child who was not abused. Miller, throughout his years of research, began networking with other researchers and agency officials and eventually conducted a study of the Kennedy Foundation's Community of Caring. He also designed a program called FACTS and feelings, which was intended to help families discuss sexuality with more ease. This program relied on videotapes and newsletters from the FACTS and feelings team. A follow-up report on the families involved in the study suggested that while the families talked more about the issues, the talking didn't really change the teens' attitudes or behaviors regarding sex. Miller compares the program to mathematics. His analogy is that in order for students to learn mathematics, they are taught the basics at a young age and then build on them in an "incremental fashion." He says that repetition and redundancy are important instruments in teaching other subjects. It's the way we need to handle sexual eduation too, he says. In a mission to learn more about teen-age sexual behavior, Miller took a sabbatical leave. It began a yearlong journey in which he studied the sexual behavior of teen-agers at various locations in the United States. After summer 1987 in Minnesota, he and his wife and children moved to Kirtland, Wash., where he was a visiting scientist at the Batelle Human Affairs Research Center. After a few months there, they moved across country to Washington, D.C., and researched at the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development. They returned home to Utah in the summer of 1988. The sexual behaviors expert has worked at a variety of institutions. He began his teaching career at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1975, and has received many awards, including researcher of the year for family life at USU for three different years. Man years of hard work and research have allowed Miller to write seven books, 74 chapters in books and journal articles, and nine papers. In 1995, after a total of 15 years at USU, Miller became the head of the department of family and human development. He was an obvious choice, having already acted as department head in 1991 while Jay Schaneveldt was in Thailand. Miller describes the job of department head as a balancing act. He says it's hard to juggle the needs of faculty, staff and students and still try to maintain a scholarly research program. Chris Oliverson, who works with Miller daily as his administrative assistant, says, "He's just an enjoyable person to work with." Oliverson lits the qualities of the department head that she most appreciates: "He's supportive, patient, he explains things well, he's organized. . . . He's very well organized." She's been working with him since he became department head four years ago. Miller continues to do research in the area of adolescent sexual behaviors. He is involved now with many federally funded teen pregnancy prevention programs, including the Office of Population Affairs, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs. He says they have the goal of lowering teen pregnancies by one-third by the year 2005. As Miller utilizes the website www.teenpregnancy.org, he discovers that teen pregnancy rates are decreasing and have been since 1991. Part of Miller's research declares that the two main reasons for the decline are that the rate of teen-agers having sex is going down, while the rate of teens using contraceptives is going up. He continues to say that the decreasing pregnancy rates go along with the trends in society. Crime rates also are decreasing. "If the social conditions are right, they're less likely to do these things," he says. About 12,420 teen-age girls get pregnant in a typical year in Utah, according to research conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. That may seem like a lot, but it is still far below the national average. Consider that some of those girls are married and age 19 or 18 when they get pregnant. In Utah, 95 of every 1,000 girls get pregnant, and of those 14 or younger, only two out of every 1,000 get pregnant. Miller explains that in order for any sexual education program to be effective, culture, family, school and religion all need to work together. The prevention of teen pregnancy should be a concern to everyone, not just teens, he says. According to the Chicago Tribune, Miller's research found that "families--particularly parents--are an important influence on whether their teen-agers become pregnant or cause a pregnancy." The article, by Linda Chavez, goes on to suggest that teens are more likely to remain abstinent the closer they are to their parents and the more closely theyir parents supervise them. Miller suggests that ordinary citizens should become aware and involved in the prevention of teen pregnancy. They are the ones who will be confronted with the issue as parents. "Teen pregnancy is not acceptable," he says. "It's a problematic thing
that kids need to avoid." |
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