V_V comments on Rationality Quotes June 2014 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Tyrrell_McAllister 01 June 2014 08:32PM

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Comment author: V_V 15 June 2014 11:14:02AM *  4 points [-]

According to Wikipedia:

Estimates vary greatly as to the number of women who experience a sexual assault during college, with surveys focused on the United States placing it as low as 1 in 50 (2%)[1] to as high as 1 in 4 (25%).

It seems to me that if studies get so much variance they are likely to be methodologically flawed, if not outright fraudolent.

Moreover:

Rape prevalence among women in the U.S. (the percentage of women who experienced rape at least once in their lifetime so far) is in the range of 15–20%, with different studies disagreeing with each other. (National Violence against Women survey, 1995, found 17.6% prevalence rate;[7] a 2007 national study for the Department of Justice on rape found 18% prevalence rate.[8])

A 15–20% overall rape prevalence in the general female population seems inconsistent with a ~20% prevalence in the female college population, unless you assume that college women are have an exceptionally high risk of being raped, which I would find surprising (I expect that the majority of rapes occurs to victims from socially degraded and impoverished backgrounds).

Comment author: Cyan 15 June 2014 01:38:57PM *  5 points [-]

Not all studies use the same definition of sexual assault. Surveys in particular are subject to question wording and question order effects. As army1987 notes, the ~20% proportion is for sexual assault, not just rape.

Keep in mind that the object-level question here is whether a rape-reporting rate of 12% can possibly be consistent with a ~20% sexual assault rate. Will (and the media in general) misstated the class of events to which the "12%" referred; Will then stated that it could not possibly be the case that the 12% and the 20% were consistent. This is a very strong claim, which means that checking/refuting it is easy in absolute terms. To refute the argument, it is not necessary to have precise estimates -- it is only necessary to show that the statistics being reported are broadly consistent.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 June 2014 12:48:55PM 2 points [-]

IIRC sexual assault is a broader category than rape.

Comment author: V_V 15 June 2014 04:43:02PM 3 points [-]

Fair point.
Though In informal discussions the terms are often conflated.