Both TalkLeft and Atrios link to this post on Conclusive Evidence, in which journalist David Cullen, discussing the Air Force survey (see my previous post), writes:
…college women are in much greater danger than this new story suggests. Check out this Department of Justice study published in Dec 2000, The Sexual Victimization of College Women. Figures on reported rapes are notoriously unreliable, because (according to the same study), fewer than 5 percent of rape victims report to the police. That makes for one hell of an extrapolation. The most reliable data comes from anonymous surveying. The Justice Dept study used a similar methodology to the IG report; a random phone survey of 4,400 women attending 2- or 4-year colleges or universities across the country. Key finding: it estimated that nearly 20% of women would be raped during a 4-year college career. (The report indicates the total is probably higher because five years is more common now, but it’s not at the Academy. Most cadets graduate in four years, so we’ll stick to a four-year comparison).
[…]We’ll see how much that gets reported. Watch the press on this story. Watch them fixate on the Air Force Academy, ignoring Harvard, Princeton and everywhere else. Just watch.
So Dave’s point is that women are in more danger of being raped in four years of a regular college (20%) than at the Air Force Academy (12%).
Goodness knows I don’t want to slag on Dave Cullen, a good journalist whose heart is obviously in the right place. He’s absolutely right to think that the dangers of rape even at mainstream colleges is terribly underreported by the press. But he’s mistaken about these particular statistics.
First of all, the particular statistic Dave is relying on from “The Sexual Victimization of College Women” (SVCW) is very dubious. SVCW basically measured the rape incidence for college women for a seven-month period (which was 2.8%, including both completed and attempted rape). To extrapolate from that to four years, the authors multiplied 2.8% by seven (because seven months is approximately one-seventh of four years).
As DCH writes in the comments, “You can’t just multiply probabilities like that. If you do, then you predict, for example, that if a woman attended the Air Force Academy for 36 years, she’d have a 108% chance of being raped.”
Indeed, even the authors of SVCW say this procedure is “problematic for a number of reasons.” As the authors explain in a footnote, it would take a different kind of study “to assess accurately the victimization risk for women throughout a college career.” So it’s doubtful that the authors of SVCW would agree with the emphasis Dave is placing on this statistic.
Secondly, even if we ignore all that, David is still using the wrong statistic for his comparison. As I explain in the post prior to this one, the Air Force study used an outdated survey method – in which very few, non-detailed screening questions are asked – which is widely believed to underestimate rape incidence. As it happens, the SVCW study included a comparison componant, which – like the Air Force study – used a small number of non-detailed screening questions. Since this is the portion of the SVCW study with a methodology closest in design to the Air Force study, the results from this portion of the SVCW are the most appropriate to use for a comparison.
So what are the results? Using the outdated methodology, the SVCW found that 0.34% of college women experience completed or attempted rape in a seven-month period. Multiplying by seven to cover four years worth of college yields 2.4% (I know, this is bad methodology, but I’m ignoring that for the sake of the argument). So – using the closest comparison possible, given the datasets – it turns out that about 2.4% of women at ordinary colleges are raped (including attempted rapes) in a four-year college career, compared to about 12% at the Air Force Academy.
(Just to be clear – the 2.4% number is the best number to use for comparison to the deeply flawed Air Force survey, because it shares similar flaws. However, both numbers are almost certainly underestimates.)
I’m pointing this out because I don’t want Dave – or other progressives and feminists – to attach themselves to an easily-refuted mistake. However, let me emphasize again that although Dave’s mistaken about this one statistical comparison, he’s correct overall: the problem of rape in college – and, I’d add, in high school – is horribly underreported by the mainstream press.
UPDATE: Edited to add quote from DCH..
Um… You can’t just multiply probabilities like that. If you do, then you predict, for example, that if a woman attended the Air Force Academy for 36 years, she’d have a 108% chance of being raped.
I agree. Sorry if that wasn’t clear from my post.
So, what you’d have to do, since this is the probability that a woman will be raped at least once in four years, you’d eliminate over every 7 months the percentage that had already been raped. But given .34% raped in 7 months, taking this into account would still yield a total of 2.4% as Amp mentioned. It would likely yield a smaller number than 20% with the other SVCV number of 2.8%, but then this methodology is an upper estimate given the data since it assumes that no one will be raped during two separate 7 month periods, nor does it take into account breaks for summer and winter where they apply.
Now I’ll end this post, as all this sort of detached talking about statistical methods involving rape is making me nauseous. I think I’ll do something more uplifting, like watch Schindler’s List.
Take a look at general society then? I don’t know that what the cadets experienced was that far off?
One out of every six (it used to be one in four, but reports say rape is finally on a downward trend-according to the same report I cite below)American women have been the victims of an attempted or completed rape in their lifetime (14.8% completed rape;2.8% attempted rape). A total of 17.7 million women have been victims of these crimes.[Prevalence, Incidence and Consequences of Violence Against Women Survey, National Institute of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1998.] In 2002, seven out of every eight rape victims were female. [NCVS 2002] Men are rape victims, too.
But teresa, that doesn’t give a good comparison to the AFA if the methods are not similar. If it’s done in 1998, it seems more likely that they’re using the more updated surveying method that Amp mentioned in his post below, thus the methods are separate.
Plus if we’re to truly compare the likelihood of rape in the AFA and colleges as compared to society as a whole, then the numbers for society as a whole should exclude cases where the victim was in college or the AFA, so as to have two independent data sets.
Well I’ve got the flu and my mind is much too muddy to sort this all out, but it looks like the data might be even more problematic than I thought.
Perhaps the AFA numbers are really high, if they’re underestimated.
Here’s another twist, though, that I haven’t seen discussed. And I’m not trying to apologize for the AFA, but I think this is a major variable:
During the spring, when I was trying to compare numbers and finally decided the AFA data was just way too tenuous to even cite, I was struck by the question of which is more fair: The percentage of women raped, or the percentage of men who are rapists? (Setting aside the whole men-raped issue.)
If you’re an 18-year-old woman, applying to the school, it’s definitely the former you’re concerned with. But if we’re contemplating slamming the AFA for high rape rates, it’s the rate of men doing it which is more relevant.
When the population is 50/50, the calculations are the same, but the AFA is only about 17-18% (going from memory) female, so it has a huge impact on the calculation. (Though I’m way too shaky to attempt the calculation at the moment.) The problem with this is that we don’t know how many non-cadet women are being raped by cadets. But with the confinement, it would be reasonable to assume that the female cadets were the main targets–though just in the past week or so, a group of (seven, I believe) cadets were busted with two high school girls, so it’s an element.
Last night someone also raised an issue I had not considered before. Because they spend their life under such scrutiny, and confined to barracks where it would be difficult to succeed at a rape, we should probably expect the AFA numbers to be lower because they have far fewer opportunities–so if, say the AFA numbers were to match national numbers, that would be a cause for concern. I don’t know enough about rapist pyschology to know if that is valid or not, though. Would a rapist denied opportunity repeatedly end up committing fewer rapes, or just seek out the opportunities and end up satisfying his “needs” just as much?
The deeper into this I get, the more frustrated I am about understanding whether the prevalence is higher or lower among male cadets.
A few points I think remain, though:
1. It is grossly unacceptably high at the AFA.
2. It’s a national problem, and the press would be well advised to highlight that problem while they have the chance.
3. Other results from the survey should finally demonstarte to the AF that only a fraction of women are reporting their rapes to authorities at the AFA. So now the big weakness in their plan announced this spring is all the more apparent. Much of it relies on the philosophy that they can order victims to report. The lack of confidentiality and/or mechanisms for a victim to speak to a counselor and think it over for a few days before deciding on pressing charges is a huge problem.
Well I’ve got the flu and my mind is much too muddy to sort this all out, but it looks like the data might be even more problematic than I thought.
Perhaps the AFA numbers are really high, if they’re underestimated.
Here’s another twist, though, that I haven’t seen discussed. And I’m not trying to apologize for the AFA, but I think this is a major variable:
During the spring, when I was trying to compare numbers and finally decided the AFA data was just way too tenuous to even cite, I was struck by the question of which is more fair: The percentage of women raped, or the percentage of men who are rapists? (Setting aside the whole men-raped issue.)
If you’re an 18-year-old woman, applying to the school, it’s definitely the former you’re concerned with. But if we’re contemplating slamming the AFA for high rape rates, it’s the rate of men doing it which is more relevant.
When the population is 50/50, the calculations are the same, but the AFA is only about 17-18% (going from memory) female, so it has a huge impact on the calculation. (Though I’m way too shaky to attempt the calculation at the moment.) The problem with this is that we don’t know how many non-cadet women are being raped by cadets. But with the confinement, it would be reasonable to assume that the female cadets were the main targets–though just in the past week or so, a group of (seven, I believe) cadets were busted with two high school girls, so it’s an element.
Last night someone also raised an issue I had not considered before. Because they spend their life under such scrutiny, and confined to barracks where it would be difficult to succeed at a rape, we should probably expect the AFA numbers to be lower because they have far fewer opportunities–so if, say the AFA numbers were to match national numbers, that would be a cause for concern. I don’t know enough about rapist pyschology to know if that is valid or not, though. Would a rapist denied opportunity repeatedly end up committing fewer rapes, or just seek out the opportunities and end up satisfying his “needs” just as much?
The deeper into this I get, the more frustrated I am about understanding whether the prevalence is higher or lower among male cadets.
A few points I think remain, though:
1. It is grossly unacceptably high at the AFA.
2. It’s a national problem, and the press would be well advised to highlight that problem while they have the chance.
3. Other results from the survey should finally demonstarte to the AF that only a fraction of women are reporting their rapes to authorities at the AFA. So now the big weakness in their plan announced this spring is all the more apparent. Much of it relies on the philosophy that they can order victims to report. The lack of confidentiality and/or mechanisms for a victim to speak to a counselor and think it over for a few days before deciding on pressing charges is a huge problem.
Agh the infamous double post. Anyway . . .
The thing is, David, I don’t think you can determine what percentage of men are rapists by taking the percentage of women raped. Because we don’t know if more than one woman is raped by the same man, or if one woman is gang-raped. And we certainly can’t assume that any survey would tell us anything, since rapists will lie about being rapists.
I’ve avoided commenting on the situation at the Air Force Academy mostly because I’ve not meticulously been following the news reports. However, I think that I can contribute a bit to the discussion with a perspective of the Air Force Academy from community which surrounds it.
Of course, the usual disclaimer applies: all of this is anecdotal and should not to be taken as an absolute, scientific analysis of the situation.
I live in Colorado Springs, Colorado and have lived here my entire life. For those of you who don’t already know, the Air Force Academy is in Colorado Springs, or at least near enough. The Academy (or USAFA, as the ubiquitous official acronym goes) is technically segregated from the city proper, but the Academy is less than ten minutes from one of the biggest shopping areas of the city, the city’s main street is named “Academy Boulevard” and begins at the Academy gate and cuts through the heart of the city, and one of the biggest public high schools in the city is actually on the Academy grounds (students who don’t live on base, as the majority of them do not, are bused in or drive themselves). The city of Colorado Springs pretty much revolves around the military (and religious fundamentalists, as James Dobson’s Focus on the Family is headquartered here, but that’s a different subject), but most especially around the Academy, or so it always seemed to me.
While I didn’t go to the high school on the Academy grounds (called Air Academy High School, but I’ll refer to it soley as AAHS to avoid confusion) both of my older siblings did as did the majority of my friends and neighbours. (I was in the right area of town to go there, but I opted to attend the district’s technology magnet instead.) Among the high school girls I knew (and I suppose among the guys as well, although I only knew one person who was openly gay in high school thus was the climate of the place) the USAFA cadets were grand catches, great dates, and not all that uncommon. Most of the girls I knew, whether they went to AAHS or not, had dated a cadet (my sister dated a few) while they were in high school and it wasn’t considered that big of a deal. This is just to say that the situation Mr. Cullen mentioned in which eight cadets were caught with two underage girls is hardly uncommon. From where I sit, it’s actually quite normal for the cadets to fool around with the high school girls.
That said, outside of the starry-eyed teenager demographic and inside the college and just-post-college-age demographics, USAFA cadets have a reputation as people to avoid unless you like a) authority, and b) money. The cadets are viewed as hyper-masculine types, a whole school of frat boys, cruising around town in new sports cars and picking up women. Which isn’t to say that the cadets had a reputation as rapists, or that their victims deserved to be raped for not paying attention to something to silly as reputation, but it’s just common knowledge that dating a cadet is bad news. (Which makes me wonder how so many high school girls end up dating them…)
I’m finding it hard to describe exactly what the sense is among the city’s inhabitants regarding the USAFA cadets except to say that, while I can’t speak for everyone, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of surprise around here when the Academy rape stories broke. It was sickening, but not surprising. There are always rumors and whispers, of course, but throughout high school and in college, before the rape stories broke, I knew or had heard of a number of women (non-cadets) who had been raped by cadets and who hadn’t reported it for a variety of reasons. The surprise from the Academy rape stories seemed to revolve mostly around the female cadets being raped, rather than around the male cadets raping, if that makes sense.
There you have it. No facts, no statistics, nothing really juicy, just a view of the Academy from a neighbor.
I was making a larger point about rape in general, not challenging or trying to compare to the particular report mentioned. One in six, one in four—the statistics are grim in most every responsibly done study. The studies are indeed different–just pointing out that the probability of rape for women (especially under 30) is ridiculously high.
thank you, teresa, for beinging us back to the point. although i appreciate the tenacity everyone is bringing to the statistics, i still think it’s more important that we look at the overall picture – rape is a very serious problem for women, especially young women, and should be recognized as such for those organizations that promote hyper-masculinity for the sake of building community.
frankly, all the hair-splitting over statistics makes me a bit ill, not because anyone is careful enough to do so, but because of the statistical topic and what these numbers tell us.
I agree. Any non-zero figure for rape is grim, and the realistic figures for USAFA, other schools, and the general population are appalling.
I do want to clarify my original post, though–I don’t think the authors of SVCW made the multiplication mistake. I didn’t see anything in the text to suggest that they did (or would), and their numbers appear at a glance to be lower than what you’d get doing it the wrong way.
I completely agree ms lauren. I guess what can be lost in determining a specific probability is the fact that any significant probability is terrible. I was actually halfway going over calculations in my first post when I suddenly became nauseous when I realized what it was exactly I was calculating.
OTOH this has given me a more clear picture in my head of the exact problem of rape that we’re dealing with in society as a whole, so I guess overall it’s good to do.
The estimated rate of sexual assault in America’s prisons is, according to Human Rights Watch’s primitive data, about 22%. Using the 19% statistic the Times gave, that means there’s about the same chance you’ll be raped at the Air Force Academy as you would have in prison. Granted, the prison stats are much, much shakier, but I doubt that if the government won’t do anything to protect the military, they’ll be willing to do anything for prisoners if/when we get good data. I’ve written more about this at my site, but suffice to say that the government has a horrific record of protecting anyone under its watch, so I’m not that surprised.
I think as long as rape stays on the “women’s issues” agenda, it will be a looming dark cloud over our society. There are some male groups, like Men Against Rape, who have been brave enough to take a stand but we need more decent, enlightened men to speak up and apply pressure.
I dated a guy many years ago who said to me over dinner, “I don’t get what the big deal is about rape…I mean doesn’t she have to be ‘wet’ for you get in anyway?” If only I had the guts then to squash him like the nasty little roach he was. This was a college-educated, active-in-the community/chamber-frequenting businessman.
One more point about the tone of our culture and then I’ll quit soap-boxing. Think to yourself how many movies you’ve seen where women are raped. Now think about how many you’ve seen where men were raped. Thousands vs. a handful, right? Mention “Deliverance” to a man and they shudder. If I were privy to the number of rape scenes I have been exposed to during my media-saturated life, I’m sure I would pass out from shock.
But if we’re contemplating slamming the AFA for high rape rates, it’s the rate of men doing it which is more relevant.
I’m not so sure about that. I mean, hasn’t the Catholic Church been taking rather a slamming for its record on priests molesting kids? And does anyone really believe that priests who molest minors aren’t, well, very distinctly in the minority among priests as a whole? And yet the Church doesn’t get a pass for that reason – and rightly – because the real issue is how bishops responded when the activities of that unsavory minority were brought to their attention.
In the same way, when any organization – the USAFA, other schools, or, for that matter, even prisons – has a high frequency of rape, they don’t get off the hook on responsibility because only a minority among them are actually performing the rapes. I have to also ask the question, what is the non-raping majority doing about rape? Is it taken seriously?
Hmm…I think the tone of the original statement was actually that the number of men who are raping is a more relevant statistic because they are also presumably raping women who aren’t attending the AFA, while the study measured only the women enrolled who had been raped. But I could be misreading it.
Pingback: Pacific Views
Pingback: feministe
Pingback: feministe