Campus Sexual Assault: Bad Statistics Don’t Help Victims
Agenda-driven studies are skewing the campus sexual assault debate
For years, we have heard that that 1-in-4 or 1-in-5 college women are victims of rape or sexual assault. The studies behind the statistic tended to be agenda-driven and unscientific, but now according to hundreds of news stories, there’s a new, more comprehensive survey that confirms epidemic levels of sexual predation on campus. Could these researchers be right?
“The Association of American Universities released the findings of its massive new report on campus sexual assault,” says Sommers. According to the study approximately 1 in 4 women report instances of unwanted sexual assault during their college tenure. However, the authors caution those estimates may be too high because of the large non-response rate of the survey itself. While close to 800,000 students were sent the survey, only about 150,000 completed it. Students who had suffered sexual assault may have been more likely to complete the survey than those who had not, skewing the percentages upward.
Survey participants were not asked if they had been raped or sexually assaulted, but were asked about a bevy of other behaviors, including whether or not someone had rubbed up against them in a sexual way at a party. Though such advances may have certainly been uninvited, they can’t rightly be lumped in with rape.
Despite the author’s repeated warnings that the statics rendered were over-simplified and likely not accurate, the AAU study is often presented as accurate.
According to Sommers, the most reliable data on the subject comes from the Justice Department. The DOJ says that 1 in 4 number is closer to 1 in 53 — a BIG difference.
Presenting bad statistics as fact detracts from instances of actual sexual assault, demeaning the trauma of its victims. College students should be protected from sexual violence whenever and where ever possible. But, “misleading research undermines those efforts,” says Sommers.
Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye
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WOW! What loving parent would ALLOW…much less SEND…a daughter into one of these satyr’s dens…!?!?!?
(Answer: none. Everybody knows this is complete bullshit by the Collective. It’s an open secret.)
First, they have to re-define some word or other, because they have a felt need to confuse people in order to persuade them.
Or else they just use misquotes to create an “issue” to their liking.
Meanwhile, Ben Carson has openly said that he is seeking to have a more mature conversation in our society. They attack him with misleading stories.
It’s too early to get the San Diego Union-Tribune article, so here’s an associated press article carried by ABC.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/risk-carson-backing-off-nazi-slavery-talk-34775537
Does Carson actually throw “rhetorical grenades?” We know who actually does this.
This article is short on actual quotes from him, and long on talk about what he said, together with highly edited versions™ of what he said.
This is the one actual quote from him in the article.
“I was never pro-abortion, but I was pro-choice,” he said. “I felt that even though I didn’t believe in it, I didn’t really have the right to say what anybody else did. And the thing that really changed my mind about that was thinking … that if the abolitionists said that, said, ‘Well, I don’t believe in slavery, but everybody else can do whatever they want,’ I think maybe we may still have slavery.”
Bad manners is not the same as rape, and remarks by the thoughtful Mr. Carson are not rhetorical grenades.
Call them out. Every. Time.
Interesting that the progs would choose to continue this line of bullshit at the time that they’re trying to foist Hillary Clinton on the country as POTUS. She of the serial rapist husband, who has destroyed the lives of numerous of his rape victims in order to protect her climb to power. She who is on tape cackling about how she helped her child rapist client “get off.” This campaign really ought to be fun to watch, ASSUMING that the Republicans run a candidate with the gonads to take the fight to Hillary.
self fulfilling by leftists?? because when Obama imports 10’s thousands of Muslim illegal alien invaders like EU the rate will be very high.
If college was as dangerous as they claim it would be more dangerous than South Africa. Rape capital of the world.
Since it is not. They define everything from regret sex to flatulence as rape. There is a place where rape is endemic. Men’s prisons.