Baby Think It Over®: Using Role-Play to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

Adolescence, Fall, 2001 by Jennifer W. Out, Kathryn D. Lafreniere

The present study was designed with research by Saltz et al. (1994) in mind. They employed role-play as a technique to challenge adolescents' personal fable of invulnerability: "it can't happen to me." According to Saltz et al., research has demonstrated that role-play can be a useful tool for producing attitude change by increasing perspectivetaking skills, personalizing abstract information, and challenging risk denial.

In their study, Saltz et al. assigned ninth-grade students to one of three conditions: (a) video role-playing group (adolescents engaged in role-play concerning teens involved in pregnancy dilemmas, and videotaped this role-play), (b) video viewing group (adolescents watched the videos prepared by their classmates in the video role-play group), and (c) control group (adolescents did not participate in either of the previously mentioned groups). Saltz et al. predicted that adolescents who engaged in role-play would be the most likely of the three conditions to express positive attitudes toward abstinence before marriage and would endorse the use of contraceptives for teens who are sexually active. It was found that both role-playing the consequences of teen pregnancy and watching friends role-playing significantly increased favorable attitudes toward abstinence in adolescent girls, but did not significantly change attitudes toward contraceptive use.

Saltz et al. also reported an important unexpected finding. Adolescents in their study were permitted to develop and use their own themes for the role-play. Despite instructions to develop stories concerning the consequences of teen pregnancy, not one was concerned with events taking place after the period of first discovering the pregnancy, such as caring for an infant. Saltz et al. suggested that these issues were completely outside the time frame conceptualized by the teens in their study.

The purpose of the present study was to examine an intervention aimed at encouraging the adolescent to acknowledge his or her own personal risk for involvement in an unplanned pregnancy, as well as prompting him or her to consider the types of commitments involved in adolescent parenting. In 1994, the pregnancy rate in the Windsor and Essex County area among girls aged 19 years and younger was 52.1 per 1,000, compared with the Ontario average of 39.6 per 1,000 (Ontario Live Births Database, 1997). In an effort to reduce the rate of adolescent pregnancy in the Windsor area, nurses at the city's Teen Health Centre have implemented a program called Baby Think It Over (R) (BTIO; Jurmaine, 1994). This program involves the use of infant simulators--lifelike dolls that allow adolescents to role-play the responsibilities involved in parenting. Strachan and Gorey (1997) investigated the impact of BTIO on adolescents' attitudes and beliefs about what their future might be like as teen parents; after three days with the dolls, 90% of the sample scored higher on a measure of realistic parenting expectations than did the average adolescent in the comparison group.