OBJECTIVESBy the end of this lesson, participants will be able to:1. Distinguish between different definitions of sexual abstinence from public health sources, books, websites, etc., and their motivations and reasons for valuing abstinence. 2. Understand that abstinence is a conscious choice for any time and for any duration. 3. Describe reasons for using or not using abstinence, including the possible benefits and drawbacks to choosing abstinence or sexual intercourse. 4. Develop a definition of abstinence that reflects their values, motivations, and desired outcomes for using abstinence. RATIONALEYoung people need to know that abstinence is a far more complex, difficult concept than it is often portrayed. Abstinence is a decision about sexual behaviors that a person may make throughout his or her life. It is a choice made at a specific time in a specific situation, for a specific period of time, whether one is in a partnered relationship or not. Among other things, young people need to come to terms with how they each define abstinence, their reasons for choosing or not choosing abstinence, how and when they will communicate with existing or potential partners about their decisions, and how they will commit to and carry out their sexual decisions.

Public support and political mobilization are two crucial factors for the adoption of ambitious climate policies in line with the international greenhouse gas reduction targets of the Paris Agreement. Despite their compound importance, they are mainly studied separately. Using a random forest machine-learning model, this article investigates the relative predictive power of key established explanations for public support and mobilization for climate policies. Predictive models may shape future research priorities and contribute to theoretical advancement by showing which predictors are the most and least important. The analysis is based on a pre-election conjoint survey experiment on the Swiss CO2 Act in 2021. Results indicate that beliefs (such as the perceived effectiveness of policies) and policy design preferences (such as for subsidies or tax-related policies) are the most important predictors while other established explanations, such as socio-demographics, issue salience (the relative importance of issues) or political variables (such as the party affiliation) have relatively weak predictive power. Thus, beliefs are an essential factor to consider in addition to explanations that emphasize issue salience and preferences driven by voters’ cost-benefit considerations.