Implementing and evaluating a rural community-based sexual abstinence program: challenges and solutions

Informing both program evaluation and practice research, this paper describes lessons learned during the planning, implementation, and pilot phases of an abstinence education program based in a rural community in a southern state in the USA. Although a number of challenges can emerge in successfully implementing and evaluating such a program in a school and community setting, few publications have focused on bringing these challenges to light and highlighting strategies that were used to overcome them. This paper fills this knowledge gap by describing a community-based abstinence education evaluation project, outlining the challenges in implementing and evaluating the pilot phase of the project, and presenting strategies to address these challenges.