Although it's been addressed before, the methodologies used in garnering this statistic are questionable at best.

This particular study, which is one source used on the sexual assault wikipedia entry, claims to have a better methodology, and still apparently arrives at the "1 in 4" statistic, this time addressing women at college, arriving at 24% based on adding the 3% rape, 11% attempted rape, and 10% rape prior to college, despite the prior to college statistics being from a separate study, the 3% rape being from one study's sample, and 11% from an extrapolation to "per 1000 students"which still seems like an inaccurate calculation)*. In other words, it's conflating 3 different statistics arrived at by 3 different methodologies. That alone makes it suspect to be on the wiki entry.

Upon reading it appears this study also uses the flawed methodology of using a series of questions that are ambiguous or lead the surveyed into an answer.

As the study itself says, one of the methodologies used was:

Measuring sexual victimization using a two-stage process starting with “behaviorally specific” screen questions that attempted to cue respondents to recall and report to the interviewer different types of sexual victimization experiences they may have had. Those who reported a victimization were then asked a series of questions, called an incident report, to verify what type of sexual victimization, if any, had occurred.

Emphasis mine. Now at first I thought the incident report-attempt to verify aspect seemed like a way to prevent overestimating the numbers. But first, let's address the cue questions themselves; the first few questions were reasonable to determine if sexual victimization occurred(and in this study, stalking is considered sexual victimization), but they certainly all aren't that reasonable, or are far too ambiguous:

  • Since school began in fall 1996, has anyone attempted but not succeeded in unwanted or uninvited touching of a sexual nature?

This is far too ambiguous, as "sexual nature" isn't really defined.

  • Since school began in fall 1996, has anyone made or tried to make you have sexual intercourse or sexual contact when you did not want to by making threats of nonphysical punishment, such as lowering a grade, being demoted or fired from a job, damaging your reputation, or being excluded from a group for failure to comply with requests for any type of sexual activity?

  • Since school began in fall 1996, has anyone made or tried to make you have sexual intercourse or sexual contact when you did not want to by making promises of rewards, such as raising a grade, being hired or promoted, being given a ride or class notes, or getting help with coursework from a fellow student if you complied sexually?

These would sometimes qualify as sexual harassment, but not sexual assault. Lumping them in with sexual assault is dishonest.

  • Since school began in fall 1996, has anyone made or tried to make you have sexual intercourse or sexual contact when you did not want to by simply being overwhelmed by someone’s continual pestering and verbal pressure?

Mere persistence is not sexual assault.

Now on to the incidence reports. There is a problem right off the bat:

Responses to the screen questions were not used to classify the type of victimization reported by the respondent. Instead, classification was based on the responses in the incident report to questions about (1) the type of penetration experienced (e.g., penile-vaginal, anal, oral); (2) the type of unwanted sexual contact experienced (e.g., touching, grabbing, or fondling); and (3) the means of coercion used by the perpetrators (e.g., force, threat of force).

So the surveyers themselves determined the type of victimization.

There are even some problems with the definitions used to classify these victimizations:

most all victimizations are defined as "unwanted", without clarification if it was unwanted at the time of the incident or at any time at all, failing to rule out those who afterwards had regretted it, while possibly not classifying those who were incapacitated and consented but were not legally able to do so as not rape victims.

Completed/attempted sexual coercion included "pestering/verbal pressure", despite the legal definition of coercion requiring duress, and duress encompassing harm or threat of harm.

Sexual contact begins to define itself, and then ends with "or some other form of unwanted sexual contact.", creating an infinite loop of ambiguity

Lumping in threats of rape/sexual contact as sexual victimization. While threatening rape/sexual contact is by no means completely okay and a different kind of crime in most states, it is not sexual assault nor rape. Nonetheless they included threats of rape as attempted rape, apparently regardless of context.

Their results of rape/attempt rape were 2.8% total, and 3% when including "separate" victims(those who were a victim of a completed rape and a separate attempted rape).

Of course they then extrapolate that 7 month period out to 5 years for a degree, and presume 20% of women are raped, while in the very previous sentence said making such an extrapolation is problematic due to rape rates not necessarily being constant throughout the year, and they didn't even mention that college populations are on constant flux either.

Their national sample was 4446 women, with an 85.6% response rate, meaning 3806 women participated. Of those women,

  • 74 responded with what was classified as completed rape

  • 49 responded with what was classified as attempted rape.

How they got 16.6% as the rate per 1000 students I have no idea, since 74/3806 is ~1.9%, and dividing both by 3.806 to get a "per 1000" doesn't change that.

The comparison study shows its rape/attempted rape/threat of rape statistics are very different and all very much lower, and apparently 45% of women whose responses were later classified as victimization did not consider themselves victims. It's arguable whether the respondents were actually not victims of a crime and their experiences are being framed as such or they victims of a crime and are in denial.

It's pretty clear this study doesn't demonstrate that 1 in 4 women in college are sexually victimized. Whether it is true or not is irrelevant to it being sourced in the wiki entry. This is another example of a flawed study, and while that doesn't make their conclusions wrong, it does make their arguments invalid. I am no wiki guru, and others may be better at having the entry cited for investigation, but I imagine others are.