However, it might be possible that the differences in academic achievement between sexually active and abstinent teens are due to differences in social background factors such as parental education, gender, race,
family structure, and family income. In this paper, regression analyses were used to check for this possibility; in this statistical procedure, abstaining teens were compared to sexually active teens with identical social background characteristics. The inclusion of social background factors such as race, parental education, family income, and family structure had little impact on the findings. Even after inclusion of background factors, teen virginity was found to be a significant and independent predictor of academic success. Abstaining teens did dramatically better academically when compared to sexually active teens from identical socio-economic backgrounds.