This paper critically examines the evidence from recent experimental design evaluations on the impact of HIV/AIDS prevention through youth education programs in sub-Saharan Africa. It pre-specifies the study inclusion criteria, the search strategy and the methods for summarizing findings. This paper also identifies recurring flaws in the research and suggests several methods for avoiding these shortcomings in future studies. Our initial search produced 139 potential articles for review, but only six met the pre-stated study inclusion criteria. Although all six studies are randomized controlled trials, we found recurring problems across the six articles in the areas of design, analysis and reporting that could possibly contribute to misleading or questionable findings. This paper identifies a need for rigorous evaluations of HIV prevention programs to determine the characteristics of effective behavior change interventions and to improve programs, and a need for a systematic review of the research on HIV education interventions.