Introduction

This is a brief report of a systematic review and meta-analysis which examined the effectiveness of early childhood educational programs for preventing teenage pregnancy by synthesizing randomized control trials.

Methods

The search terms included ‘children’, ‘early childhood intervention’, and ‘teen pregnancy’. Databases, bibliographies, grey literature, and policy reports were searched in February and March 2018 and included studies with interventions implemented with participants from birth to 5 years old.

Results

Only four randomized control trials were eligible for inclusion. Individually, only two of the studies reported a significant effect of early childhood education. There was a significant effect for the primary outcome of teenage pregnancy prevention in the meta-analysis (RR 0.70, 95% CI 0.54–0.89). However, the evidence was very weak. The meta-analysis results were weighted heavily by one study. Additionally, the included studies were conducted decades ago, lacked rigor, and varied considerably by curriculum, enrollment age, length, and intensity.

Conclusions

Given the few number of studies, and issues with rigor and heterogeneity, it is unclear whether the results of this review represent a true effect of the intervention. Importantly, this review highlights the paucity of randomized control trials examining the effectiveness of early childhood education for preventing teenage pregnancy. Future studies need to be designed to address the methodological challenges noted here to determine what facets of early childhood education most effectively prevent teenage pregnancy. Randomized control trials, while challenging to implement, are best suited to determine the true causal effect of early childhood education for preventing teenage pregnancy.

中文翻译：

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关于早期儿童教育规划和预防少女怀孕的系统综述和荟萃分析的简要报告。

介绍

这是一份系统综述和荟萃分析的简短报告，该综述通过综合随机对照试验，研究了早期教育计划对预防少女怀孕的有效性。

方法

搜索词包括“儿童”，“儿童早期干预”和“青少年怀孕”。在2018年2月和2018年3月检索​​了数据库，书目，灰色文献和政策报告，其中包括从出生到5岁的参与者进行干预的研究。

结果

只有四项随机对照试验符合纳入条件。单独地，只有两项研究报告了幼儿教育的显著作用。在荟萃分析中，预防少女怀孕的主要结果有显着效果（RR 0.70，95％CI 0.54–0.89）。但是，证据非常薄弱。一项研究对荟萃分析的结果进行了加权。此外，纳入的研究是数十年前进行的，缺乏严格性，并且因课程，入学年龄，时长和强度而有很大差异。

结论

鉴于研究数量很少，以及存在严格性和异质性的问题，目前尚不清楚该评价的结果是否代表干预的真正效果。重要的是，本综述强调了缺乏随机对照试验，该试验研究了早期教育对预防少女怀孕的有效性。需要设计未来的研究来应对此处指出的方法挑战，以确定早期儿童教育的哪些方面最有效地预防少女怀孕。随机对照试验虽然具有实施难度，但最适合于确定早教对预防少女怀孕的真正因果作用。