Real Care infant simulators offer a highly effective approach to preventing teenage pregnancies.

Update 2016-10-03

This is the email I sent to RealityWorks (their response follows it)

Dear Realityworks

I read with interest about the recent trial in Australia on the effects of a Virtual Infant Parenting programme involving your dolls. In an article reporting on the trial in the UK’s Daily Mail (here) there is an indirect quote from your CEO, Timothy Boettcher, calling into question the validity of the research that came to this conclusion, and stating that the baby simulators are extremely effective to deter teen pregnancy.

I am a doctoral researcher in education at Oxford Brookes University in the UK, and part of my research is to examine different ways to assess the effects of educational approaches, such as using baby simulators to reduce teen pregnancy. Often we find that different approaches come to different conclusions. I am interested in understanding how this recent Australian research differs from existing research. I would be extremely grateful if you were able to direct me to reports of studies that call into question the findings of the Australian study, and which support Mr Boettcher’s view about the effectiveness of the dolls.

Most sincere thanks
***** ***** *****

I did not receive a reply, but RealityWorks had obviously been perturbed enough by the Australian study to flood their website with articles in support of their position. I discovered these on returning to their site a couple of weeks after sending them an email. The jewel in this crown was what they called a white paper, collating research evidence. This white paper included summaries of 15 studies assessing the effects of the infant simulator.

These were all interesting to read. The most interesting thing about the body of literature, however, was that only one of the studies used pregnancy as an outcome measure. All of the others used attitudes and intentions towards sex and parenting among the participants as their primary outcome. That means that in only one study did they actually look at whether teens who had used the dolls became pregnant or not. Moreover, there were some pretty dodgy features of that one trial too. Most alarming was that the PI on the trial was also the person who taught the teens using the dolls. After teaching them she rang them up every three months until they were out of their teens to ask them if they had been pregnant since she last called.

It seems pretty clear from the body of research that, if you teach teenagers about the responsibility of becoming a parent using the dolls, then ask them how they feel about becoming a teen parent, most will say they think it might not be a good idea. What you can't do is say that this means they actually won't become teen parents.

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