{"id":351,"date":"2003-09-01T12:03:39","date_gmt":"2003-09-01T20:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2003\/09\/01\/the-risk-of-rape-is-higher-at-the-air-force-academy-than-at-most-colleges\/"},"modified":"2003-09-01T12:03:39","modified_gmt":"2003-09-01T20:03:39","slug":"the-risk-of-rape-is-higher-at-the-air-force-academy-than-at-most-colleges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=351","title":{"rendered":"The risk of rape is higher at the Air Force Academy than at most colleges"},"content":{"rendered":"

Both TalkLeft <\/a>and Atrios <\/a>link to this post on Conclusive Evidence<\/a>, in which journalist David Cullen, discussing the Air Force survey (see my previous post<\/a>), writes:<\/p>\n

Send your daughter–or yourself–to another university, and your chances for rape are probably even worse. Much worse. […]<\/p>\n

…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<\/a>. Figures on reported rapes are notoriously unreliable, because (according to the same study), fewer than 5 percent of rape victims<\/a> 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<\/a>. (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).<\/p>\n

[…]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.<\/p><\/div>\n

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%).<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

As DCH <\/a>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.”<\/p>\n

Indeed, even the authors of SVCW say this procedure is “problematic for a number of reasons.” As the authors explain in a footnote<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, 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<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

(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.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Edited to add quote from DCH..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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: Send your daughter–or yourself–to another university, and your chances for rape are probably even … 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":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351","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=351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}