The President of the United States has expressed concern that one in five college women are being sexually assaulted. In response, pundits who have no statistical expertise are dissecting the accuracy of those numbers—instead of talking about the undisputed fact that too many college women are being sexually assaulted.
This year, 173 people in the U.S. came down with the measles, and that is being treated as an epidemic requiring urgent action. Surely, campus rape deserves at least as much public health attention.
Yet it seems that if only 1 in 7 college women are raped, or 1 in 10, or 1 in 20, then campus parties featuring date-rape drugs, gang rapes, and other types of forced sexual activity are of less concern than whether the president’s statistics are exactly correct.
We disagree with that premise. But as public health researchers, we’re taking a look at those statistics anyway.
We read the article by Christopher P. Krebs, PhD, and his colleagues, which was published in a peer-reviewed journal and based on a study funded by the National Institute of Justice, to find out more about the “1 in 5″ statistic. Then we called Dr. Krebs to find out more.
Dr. Krebs and his colleagues studied more than 5,000 women at two large public universities. They found that one in five of the seniors said they had been sexually assaulted at some point during college.
Critics have pointed out that the definition of sexual assault includes unwanted kissing and sexual touching, and there is debate about whether those behaviors are serious or just “boys will be boys” behaviors. But the statistics speak for themselves: Most of the women who reported experiencing unwanted, nonconsensual sexual contact in an anonymous survey had experienced rape—oral, vaginal, or anal—not just other types of unwanted touching.
About 1 in 7 female seniors (15 percent) reported being raped since entering college. Those rapes happened because the women were either physically forced or threatened, or because they were incapacitated and unable to give consent. Of the students who had been raped during college while incapacitated, a substantial minority said they had definitely or probably been given a date-rape drug without their knowledge.
Although Dr. Krebs and his colleagues never claimed that the study was representative of all colleges in the U.S., other studies conducted at colleges and universities across the country have yielded similar statistics. A 2004 study done by Harvard faculty at 119 colleges nationwide found 1 in 20 of the 24,000 women had been raped during that school year (in the previous seven months). Over the course of four years, that would likely be similar to 1 in 7, since the likelihood of being raped tends to be higher for younger college women.
The White House didn’t just quote Dr. Krebs’ research; White House staff talked to him to make sure they understood how the study was done and how it should be interpreted. “We all realize that more research is needed,” Dr. Krebs told us. “I’m in the process of working on a larger study, but the first step is to make sure that we are asking the right questions and asking them in the right way.” The team will survey approximately 20,000 undergraduate women and men at 10 schools that differ in size and geography, including public and private schools and two-year and four-year schools.
We are glad that a more comprehensive study is being planned, but clearly better data are not the answer. Whether the most accurate statistics of campus rape are 1 in 5, 1 in 7, or 1 in 20, remember that there are about 10 million women who are attending colleges in the U.S. Even 1 in 20 would mean 500,000 women who have been or will be raped before they graduate. Campus rape and other types of sexual assault are a huge problem for colleges and an enormous tragedy. Most colleges have done a terrible job of preventing them or ensuring justice for the students involved.
Too much media attention has been focused on individual victims, but the “he said/she said journalism” is missing the point. And so is the punditry challenging the exact statistics.
At a June 2015 event at the Washington Post, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand as well as many other policymakers echoed these sentiments. Consultant Tracy Sefl put it best when she said, “What I care about [in terms of statistics] is that the number is not zero.”
If any other traumatic event affected half a million college students, we would be focused on finding a systemic solution. It’s long past time to do that to prevent campus rapes and bring justice to those involved.
Read original post here.