{"id":3326,"date":"2007-04-24T14:38:31","date_gmt":"2007-04-24T21:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/04\/24\/how-to-improve-the-national-violence-against-women-survey-of-rape\/"},"modified":"2007-04-24T14:38:31","modified_gmt":"2007-04-24T21:38:31","slug":"how-to-improve-the-national-violence-against-women-survey-of-rape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3326","title":{"rendered":"How To Improve The National Violence Against Women Survey Of Rape"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I’ve frequently referred to the National Violence Against Women Survey’s statistics regarding rape prevalence. ((A relatively brief summary of the NVAW survey’s findings can be read here<\/a>.)) And I’ll probably continue to refer to NVAW Survey: it’s probably the best measure that’s ever been taken of national rape prevalence in the USA. It used a large, random, nationally-representative sample; the survey included people “from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds”; and it asked about some things no previous national survey had effectively asked about, such as rape by intimate partners.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, there are important flaws in the NVAW survey, and in particular with how it measures rape prevalence. This is a first of a series of posts which will describe the flaws in the NVAW survey. This post will look at some general shortcomings with the survey; future posts will look at different ways the NVAW study may be both undercounting and overcounting rape prevalence, and at how the NVAW study does a particularly poor job of measuring rape prevalence among men.<\/p>\n

1. The NVAW study needs to be repeated at regular intervals.<\/strong> ((Shorter Amp: “The NVAW study is deeply flawed, and we need to do it more often.” :-P))<\/p>\n

Although there have been multiple good studies of rape prevalence done over the last twenty years, they each use different methodologies, making it impossible to use these studies to get a reliable estimate of how rape prevalence has changed over the years. Not all the studies are structured the same way; not all of them use nationally representative samples; not all of them use exactly comparable questions. As a result, we can’t use these studies to see if rape is increasing or decreasing over the years.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Right now, there are only two national, large scale measures of rape prevalence which are repeated every year, and both of them significantly underestimate rape prevalence. One, the National Crime Victims Survey, is believed by most experts to radically underestimate intimate violence, including rape committed by acquaintances, friends and spouses. ((From an NVAW survey research report<\/a>: “For years, researchers have attributed the low rate of intimate partner violence uncovered by the NCVS to the fact that it is administered in the context of a crime survey. Because they reflect only violence perpetrated by intimates that victims are willing to label as criminal and report to interviewers, estimates of intimate partner violence generated from the NCVS are thought to underestimate the true amount of intimate partner violence.”))<\/p>\n

The second annual measure of rape prevalence, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, includes only rapes reported to police. This is problematic, because surveys of rape victims show that the majority of rape victims never report their rape to the police. ((For example, according to this federal study<\/a>, 95% of college women who have been raped never report the rape to police. According to the NVAW study, 81% of all women who have been raped never report the rape to police.)) So although both of these studies can be used to measure how rape prevalence is changing over time (and they both indicate that rape has been decreasing in recent years), it’s difficult to have confidence in these results, particularly when it comes to rapes committed by acquaintances, friends and spouses.<\/p>\n

What’s needed is a state-of-the study of sexual and intimate violence that is repeated on a regular basis: Every year would be ideal, but even every three or five years would be useful. This would give us a much more reliable look at how rape prevalence changes over time.<\/p>\n

2.) Ask respondents which state the rape took place in.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many intriguing studies of rape and intimate violence have compared how rape and intimate violence have changed over time in different states. ((For example, Four Theories Of Rape In American Society: A State Level Analysis<\/em><\/a> by Straus and Baron. For another example, see
\nFatal violence among spouses in the United States, 1976-85″ in American Journal of Public Health 79(5), which I discuss in this post<\/a>.)) When state-level data is available, it is possible for researchers to examine correlations between rape prevalence and other factors. For instance, after controlling for other factors, is intimate rape less prevalent in states which have more help available for battered women? Is rape more common in states with a high male to female ratio? Is rape less common in states in which women have achieved greater social parity? ((According to Straus and Baron’s study<\/a>, rape is less prevalent in states in which women have achieved greater social parity, even after controlling for a great many other factors. But that study was published in 1993, and used police reports as a measure of rape prevalence; it would be nice to see studies examining this question with better and more recent measures of rape prevalence.)) These are questions that could tell us a lot about the causes and — perhaps — the prevention of rape, but the data needs to be available first.<\/p>\n

3. Include demographic questions about disability.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a no-brainer. Don Lollar of the Centers for disease control has said “Disability is not an outcome, it’s an input. Disability is a demographic variable –just like age, sex, racial ethnicity, socioeconomic status.” But although the NVAW survey included questions about age, sex, race, and ethnicity, it did not ask respondents any direct questions about their economic status (although it did ask one question — highest level of education — which can be used as a rough proxy for social class). Even worse, it didn’t ask at all about disability.<\/p>\n

Approximately 19% of Americans are disabled in some way<\/a>. Furthermore, some research ((For example<\/a>.)) indicates that disabled people are at greater risk of sexual assault. For these reasons, it is inexcusable for a nationally representative survey of sexual violence to not ask questions about disability.<\/p>\n

Probably the demographics section of the survey should ask about immigrant status, as well. It certainly seems plausible that immigrant women may be especially vulnerable to sexual assault. However, language barriers ((The NVAW survey is conducted in English and in Spanish.)) — and whether or not immigrant women have phones — may be a barrier to effectively surveying immigrant women.<\/p>\n

I’ll post more about the NVAW survey later this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I’ve frequently referred to the National Violence Against Women Survey’s statistics regarding rape prevalence. ((A relatively brief summary of the NVAW survey’s findings can be read here.)) And I’ll probably continue to refer to NVAW Survey: it’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disabled-rights-issues","category-rape-intimate-violence-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}