This is the source document for the oft-cited figure of "1 in 6 women has been raped in their lifetime". Discuss. [PDF, 4 pages, 1,75 MB, xpost from TrueReddit]

2011-07-09T22:04:58+00:00

If respondents asked for further clarification, interviewers provided more detailed definitions of sex and lack of consent.

What? No, you're not allowed to give additional clarification. That's a huge huge methodological error. You don't do that ever. You have to give everyone the exact same information or you will get skewed results. Okay, well at least tell us what these clarifications were? No? You're not going to tell us? Do you even know? Did the telephone operators just ad lib it as they went?

Some more points:

How come they only assessed the mental health of female victims? Oh right, male victims don't matter.
When calculating how likely they were to report to law enforcement they just compared the number of reports against the number of claims that their survey found. This completely ignores any variables like reporting out of state or that some of the rape reports would be false.
They specifically mention that other surveys found different results, but then they just go on using the higher results as if that's unproblematic.
The studies have titles like "Violence Against Women Survey" and "National Women's Study". Me thinks they have other hidden biases towards women being victims that they just didn't tell us about.

daveime · 2011-07-09T17:54:00+00:00

It seems to me, most people when confronted with a stranger asking them about sexual assault on the phone would simply hang up. And that possibly the most likely people who would respond are those who maybe wanted to talk about something that had happened in their recent past that perhaps they had bottled up ?

It's like doing a survey at the Samaritans Hotline and basing the national depression rate upon the number of callers who just want someone to talk to about their problems.

Also, extrapolating a national lifetime rape figure from a sample size of 163 Coloradons(?) who responded to an anonymous phone survey seems just a tad statistically invalid to me.

c0mputar · 2011-07-09T19:17:14+00:00

This study suffers from some major flaws:

Firstly, the sample is already not randomized because it over-represents individuals who would take a survey over the phone.

Secondly, rape victims are more likely to stay on the line when it's an anonymous Public Health survey. Not sure how they presented the survey over the phone but if it was more accurately described as something to do with sexual assaults, it further skews the results. Someone who has no sexual assault or dangerous health history is more likely to shrug and hang up.

Thirdly, when confronted with those particular questions, some people may be offended and react such that they will lie and say they had gone through an attempted or completed rape, as a way of projecting their wanting to be a victim.

Next, depending on the other questions in the survey, you can easily coach an individual to state that they were a sexual assault victim. Lead the survey with a question: Can you give consent when you are intoxicated? By asking that question or one like it, you are telling people that being intoxicated makes you unable to give consent.

Lastly, because this is a telephone survey, which has all its own problems, and there is the problem that individuals took the survey under the impression that intoxication meant you could not give consent, whether or not they were coached to do so, then any sexual encounter that occurred when you were intoxicated was registered as a sexual assault by this survey.

This is the problem with surveys... People who like to do them are more likely to be fantastical [and possibly want to victimize themselves] or are already attracted to the idea of participating in a survey that involves telling someone they were or nearly were sexually assaulted.

2011-07-09T19:19:07+00:00

Only if you water down the meaning of rape.

kloo2yoo · 2011-07-09T20:21:52+00:00

[permanently deleted]

enkidusfriend · 2011-07-09T19:19:54+00:00

Selection bias.

Next.

A_Nihilist · 2011-07-09T22:44:49+00:00

[permanently deleted]

phukka · 2011-07-10T05:05:35+00:00

Ah, fuck it.

You caught us, ladies. All men plot 24/7 on ways to rape you, and everyone else, non stop.

That's all we do. 100% of men have literally nothing on their minds all day but raping people. In reality, you're lucky that only 1 in 6 women get raped. If we had our way, 7 in 6 would get raped.

After all, the ONLY thing that men are interested in is rape. Consentual sex? Fuck that boring mess, I'd rather hear you scream for help than scream for more. Employment? It's just another avenue for us to meet bitches we want to rape. Marriage? Only so we can further claim you as property as we rape the shit out of you over and over again (even though you said "I do," it was still the mans decision).

Actually, as I sit at my desk now, writing this, I'm plotting up how to rape numerous women. I mean, after all, women are inferior, right?

I wouldn't be so fucking convinced if women wouldn't stop fucking saying it.

Celda · 2011-07-09T19:21:32+00:00

Except, feminists use the "1 in 4" figure which is from the Koss survey.

CaptSnap · 2011-07-09T19:25:09+00:00

You see this survey method all the time. They fire up the telephones (its usually a bank of computers like for the NCVS) and ask people if they are a victim.

Heres why its bullshit:

Lets say instead of sexual assault or anything like that I want to find out how many college undergraduates are victims of ...oh i dont know... grand theft auto. Thats where your car is stolen. BUT, and this is kind of important, when I call people Im not going to ask if they are the victim of a crime (see how specific that is). Nevermind that one of the purposes of the entire field of western juris prudence is tind that very thing out, did a crime occur. Hell no lets skip that whole step. Instead, Im going to ask the respondents if they have ever walked outside of class and found their car gone (and from that INFER that they are the victim of a crime).

Then when nearly every single one of them says, "Yeah actually that has happened to me." Im going to create a shitstorm by saying how we live amongst some kind of ~~rape~~ car theft epidemic. Ill use my study (or another study that uses very similar methodology, such as the NCVS) to push legislators to throw money at me (like the violence against women act) so I can fix it and then Ill keep publishing studies showing how car theft is STILL rampant and I need more money. Maybe Ill even get the federal government to lower the burden of proof in these cases so that MAYBE for the love of God I can catch some actual car thieves to justify not just my budget but my dept's very existence. (of course they dont need to have stolen any cars, I just need to get the burden of proof low enough that I can convict them for it bc then they are a statistic I can use)

Of course I wont give a flying fuck that my ardent disregard for reality has not stopped a single car theft nor made cars any safer on campuses. And Ill generally come unhinged if you make a passing remark that really all Im doing is vilifying one group, indoctrinating another group with irrational fear (so much so that they cant even be asked if they want some fucking coffee without everything being creepy), and completely taking a giant shit on the real issue and the dynamics surrounding it.

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