IF THE flyers recently posted by Sexual Assault Facts and Education (SAFE) stating that one out of every four women has survived rape or attempted rape since her 14th birthday are to be believed, some 1,700 University women will be victims of these heinous crimes by the time they graduate.
But according to the University Police Department's own statistics, the student body reported a total of 16 sexual offenses in 1999, 12 of which were unconfirmed. Even if extrapolated over four years, these data would still differ from the SAFE statistics by a substantial margin.
Such a discrepancy should alone give us pause. But in a 1998 article for Society Magazine, Neil Gilbert of the University of California at Berkeley provides additional reasons to be skeptical of the one-in-four statistic and the larger study from which it is drawn.
In the late 1980s, under the auspices of the Ms. Magazine Campus Project on Sexual Assault, Mary Koss conducted a study of 6,159 female students at 32 colleges across the country. She found that 27 percent had been victims of rape (15 percent) or attempted rape (12 percent), an average of two times between the ages of 14 and 21. But as Gilbert demonstrates, Koss's study was fraught with methodological and analytical errors that seriously undermine its credibility.
The first reason for skepticism is that 73 percent of those defined by Koss as victims of rape did not themselves believe they had been raped. Additionally, 42 percent of these women later proceeded to have sex again with the men who had purportedly raped them. Most problematic, however, is that the questions in Koss's survey were convoluted and imprecise; rendering any conclusions suspect.
Take the two most egregious examples. Koss claimed to be employing the strict legal definition of rape, which while varying from state to state, generally involves the same three elements: use of physical force, threat of bodily harm, or intentional incapacitation (through drugs or alcohol).
Yet her survey asked respondents, "Have you given into sexual intercourse when you didn't want to because you were overwhelmed by a man's continual arguments and pressure?" Because this particular wording makes reference neither to force nor to threats, an affirmative response cannot be interpreted as meeting the legal standard for rape.
Koss also asked respondents, "Have you had a man attempt sexual intercourse (get on top of you, attempt to insert his penis) when you didn't want to by giving you alcohol or drugs?" This confusing question suffers from two obvious flaws. First, it is unclear how one attempts intercourse "by" providing alcohol or drugs. Second, the wording provides no way to ascertain the victim's level of intoxication or its effects on her judgment and ability to resist advances.
Admittedly, the rejection of Koss's study does not necessarily entail the rejection of the one-in-four statistic. The Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics found that in 1998, 1.6 women in 1,000 over 12 years of age were victims of rape or attempted rape. In his analysis, Gilbert uses an earlier figure of 1.2 per 1,000 to obtain a probability of between five and seven percent that a woman will be the victim of such crimes during her lifetime.
Other research conducted by academic experts has likewise arrived at figures dramatically lower than the Ms. Foundation study. A recent analysis by Linda George and Dan Blazer of Duke University found that 5.9 percent of women in North Carolina were the victims of rape or attempted rape during their lifetimes.
Margaret Gordon and Stephanie Riger of Northwestern University arrived at an even lower figure. In their survey, randomly selected residents in Chicago, San Francisco and Philadelphia reported a 2 percent lifetime rate.
Unfortunately, SAFE is not the only organization on Grounds that is peddling discredited research recklessly. Beyond its appearance in the literature and Web sites of organizations like the Sexual Assault Resource Agency (SARA), the Women's Center and the University Judiciary Committee, the one-in-four statistic has even been enshrined in the name of a peer education program sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Students.
For this reason there is far more at stake in the debate than mere numerical accuracy. An inescapable corollary of the one-in-four statistic is the disturbing suggestion that there are hundreds of rapists prowling the libraries and classrooms of the University. This cannot help but inject suspicion and fear into the already turbulent waters of contenporary heterosexual relationships. Intimacy will become dangerous, spontaneity assaultive, and subtlety impossible.
But surely the specter of rationalized, contractualized, politicized romance is bleak enough to unsettle even the most hardened of rape-crisis activists. Hopefully, we can all agree on this: Rape is a reprehensible crime demanding the severest of punishments. Out of concern for the unspeakble suffering of actual victims, we must resist its gross trivialization at the hands of SAFE and others.
(Brett Ferrell is a fourth-year College student and Sam Ross is a third-year College student)
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