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AEIdeas





Trigger Warning: If you get upset when confronted by facts and accurate statistics about campus sexual assault, please stop reading now!

A “study” conducted by “researchers” at the University of North Dakota and North Dakota State University (“Denying Rape but Endorsing Forceful Intercourse: Exploring Differences Among Responders“) and published in the journal Violence and Gender claims to find that almost one in 3 college men would commit rape “if nobody would ever know and there wouldn’t be any consequences.” Oy vey, where to begin on this one?

1. Sensational Headlines. Let’s start with a quick review of the headlines of media reports on the “study” (via Katherine Timf at NRO): a) “Study: 1 in 3 Men Would Rape if They Wouldn’t Get Caught or Face Consequences” (Cosmopolitan), b) “Study Finds That a Third of College Men Would Rape if They Could Get Away With It (Feministing), c) “1 in 3 Male University Students Would Sexually Assault a Woman “If They Could Get Away With It” (Crave Online), and d) “1 in 3 College Men Admit They Would Rape If We Don’t Call it ‘Rape’” (Jezebel). As Tom Blumer reported, the “feminist-leftist fever swamp is apparently thrilled” about this “study,” since it obviously fits the narrative of a campus rape epidemic, even though the facts on campus sexual assault fail to support that narrative.

2. The “Study” Starts with a Discredited Claim About Campus Sexual Assault. Here’s the opening sentence of the paper’s introduction: “The Federal data estimate that about one in five women becomes the victim of sexual assault while in college…..” Federal data, frequently cited by the White House and media, also estimate that “on average only 12% of student victims report the assault to law enforcement.” As I’ve pointed out many times here, those two “federal data” are mathematically contradictory and can’t possibly both be true when actual college crime data on sexual assaults are analyzed.

For example, analyses of the reported campus crime data at the two campuses of the “researchers” reveal the following:

a. At North Dakota State University (NDSU) there were 13 campus reports of sex offenses in the four years between 2010 and 2013 both on campus and off-campus. If only 12% of campus sex offenses were reported, there would have been 95 cases that went unreported, for a total of 108 sexual assaults from 2010-2013 (see top chart above). Based on the 6,355 female students at NDSU, the estimated 108 cases of sexual assault (13 reported and 95 unreported) over the last four years means that about 1.7% of NDSU female students, or 1 in 59, were victims of sexual assault. A similar analysis for the University of North Dakota (UND) reveals that over the last four years there were 34 reported sexual offenses, an estimated 249 unreported cases (based on a 12% reporting rate), for a estimated total of 283 cases of sexual assault (see bottom chart above). Based on female enrollment at UND of 6,572, that would mean that 4.3% of UND female students, or 1 in 23, were victims of sexual assault between 2010 and 2013.

The most federal data from the Department of Justice on campus sexual assault was released in a December report titled “Rape and Sexual Assault Victimization Among College-Age Females, 1995–2013.” Data provided in that report suggest that about 1 in 53 college women are victims of sexual assault while in college.

So the “study” in question by the researchers in North Dakota starts with a completely false and discredited claim about campus sexual assault (as campus crime data from their own campuses verifies), and goes downhill from there.

3. Unbelievably Small Sample Size. The biggest reason that this “study” should be completely ignored and receive no media attention is that its results and conclusions are based on a sample size of only 73 male students at one of the North Dakota universities (it’s not clear from the “study”). Those 73 male students were compensated with “extra credit for their participation,” so were presumably all taking the same college class and were therefore not randomly selected from the male student population. More troubling is the fact that the “margin of sampling error” for a tiny sample size of 73 is about +11.5%, which is such a huge margin of error that the results of this “study” can’t be taken seriously. Interestingly, the “researchers” never mention the standard statistical terms for survey-based results like “margin of sampling error” and “confidence level,” etc.

Statistically, the results of this “study” based on 73 responses are meaningless and certainly cannot be extrapolated to the entire 9 million male college student population of the US as the sensational headlines like “Study Finds That a Third of College Men Would Rape if They Could Get Away With It” suggest.

4. Violence and Gender. Finally, let’s take a look at the journal Violence and Gender that published this “study” and publicized it in a press release provocatively titled “What Motivates Males Who Commit Sexual Assault on Campus?” – see excerpt below:

“These authors describe the numbers as staggering, and we know it is one of the most concerning crimes in the country today,” says Violence and Gender Editor-in-Chief Mary Ellen O’Toole, PhD, Forensic Behavioral Consultant and Senior FBI Profiler/Criminal Investigative Analyst (ret.). “Sexual assault on college campuses is the pink elephant in the room. It is a crime that is underreported and misunderstood. In this article, researchers look at how callous sexual attitudes of some males who do not have feelings of hostility toward women can still engage in forced intercourse with a victim, and consider their behavior as an achievement rather than rape. The implications for these findings are extremely significant for education programs about sexual aggression and rape prevention and the development of a more accurate identification of subtypes of offenders based on their motivation, cognition, and personality traits.”

Note: These findings are not “staggering” and there are no “implications” for these “findings” based on a non-random sample size of 73 at one university.

Further, the stated mission of the Violence and Gender journal is to explore “the difficult issues that are vital to threat assessment and prevention of the epidemic of violence.” Has the journal bothered to check the data on violent crime in America lately? Because if they did, they would find that there is no “epidemic of violence” and in fact it’s exactly the opposite: violent crime in the US has fallen by 52% from the peak in 1991 was lower in 2013 than in any year since 1970, more than 40 years ago (see chart below). See also the Washington Post Wonkblog post today “No one can figure out why crime is so low.”

Bottom Line: To fully comprehend just how bogus this “study” is, imagine the public and media reaction if a polling organization like Gallup, Rasmussen Reports or Pew Research ever tried to release survey results on presidential or Congressional approval or any other topic with a sample size of 73 and a sampling margin of error of +11.5% (instead of the typical random sample of around 1,000 that is necessary to achieve the standard +3% margin of error at the 95% confidence level)! Those polling organizations would immediately lose credibility and would never be taken seriously again by the public and media – and that should be the same reaction to this “study,” these “researchers” and this “journal.”

As Glenn Reynolds commented on Instapundit, “If the lead researcher, Sarah Edwards, had done similarly shoddy and result-oriented scholarship about race she’d be drummed out of the academy. But shoddy research that makes men look like rapists is stylish now.”

For further reading on this “study” see:

1. “No, we did not just learn 1 in 3 college men would rape if they could get away with it” by Ashe Schow

2. Bogus ‘1 in 3 Men Would Commit Rape’ Study Discredits Itself in Opening Sentence, Goes Downhill From There by Tom Blumer

3. ‘1 in 3 College Men Would Rape a Woman’ Stat is Based On a Survey of 73 Dudes by Katherine Timpf.