An instructional program for teaching adolescents approaches to the prevention of birth defects.

Very little is being done to educate adolescents about better ways to prepare their bodies for parenthood. The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) to use the first five steps of a ten-step research and development process to produce an instructional program which would effectively teach teachers of adolescents approaches to the prevention of birth defects and (2) to produce an instructional package which demonstrates statistically significant learning by adolescents. Data analysis indicates that significant learning occurred. An important finding of this study is that the designed instructional program is effective in teaching teachers of adolescents ways to prevent birth defects.