What’s the choice, @northwesty? As we can see, the “Syracuse” numbers are not out of line with numbers reported from other schools. “Syracuse” is not the worst. Do you just keep your daughters home?
Choosing to stick one’s head in the sand and not believe the numbers from all the schools will not make the problem go away. You don’t “know” the numbers from Syracuse, Princeton, MIT, Harvard, Geneseo, Harvard and Cal Poly are overstated. You’re just making that up.
We are in 100% agreement that the question from the Sexual Experiences Survey quoted here would and should qualify as rape/gross sexual imposition/sexual battery, whatever the term is for felony sexual assault.
I am not really sure what I think about the Brown paper in general though, and I do not know where you are finding the questions actually asked by the Brown researchers. It seems to me there is a disconnect between the data reported in the Sexual Experiences Survey and the conclusions reported in the Brown paper. As near as I can tell, the Brown paper used a modified version of the Sexual Experiences Survey and then interpreted the data they found. The problem is the definitions listed under the methodology section of the Brown paper appear to be at odds with the plain meaning of the questions in the Sexual Experiences Survey that I believe you posted earlier and quoted above. To wit:
So first, what “20 item version”? Second, note the difference between “penetration with a finger or objects” which is I believe language taken from the Sexual Experiences Survey you have quoted and how the Brown authors say they define FR and IR, which is as vaginal, oral or anal penetration, but without the qualifier of the SES. The lawyer in my wonders why the qualifier was left out, and what the effect of that was. Also, for some reason the Brown researchers felt it important to list out “overwhelms you with arguments” as one of the “perpetrator tactics” which I believe you have posted earlier was data excluded from the reported results of the SES. If it was not part of this research, why mention it?
So my confusion is did the Brown researchers use modified questions from the SES or did they just take pieces of the data from a shorter version of the SES survey we have seen and try and exclude data that they felt fell outside the parameters of their research? Either would be acceptable practice I think, if done carefully, but I am leery of drawing conclusions contra to the description of the methodology in the Brown paper simply by reference to the SES you have linked to previously. Maybe the data is out there somewhere to explain this discrepancy, but I haven’t seen it and these inconsistencies make me less willing to treat this study as definitive.
i do think the Brown study makes the important point that incapacitated rape, however that is defined, is way, way more prevalent than forcible rape. I think that is a good data point, and to the extent we live in the real world of finite resources, it maybe tells us that we should spend the majority of those resources worrying more about the predatory senior frat guy looking for starry eyed co eds than the situation of traditional, physically forcible rape. Either way, the stats are mind blowingly high in this survey.
One last point, the Brown study does make mention of one thing I have been pounding on for awhile, not that it matters to the current point, but I agree with it, so I am going to quote it anyway 
There are five sexual acts:
fondle, kiss, or touch sexually;
oral sex;
try to have sexual intercourse, but it did not happen;
succeed in making you have sexual intercourse;
anal sex or penetration with a finger or objects
There are four ways to make someone do this against their will:
overwhelm you with arguments or continual pressure for sex,
use physical force,
threaten to harm you or someone close to you,
perform sexual acts while you were incapacitated by drugs or alcohol
Five times four is twenty. They state that they only count 15 of these, because they asked about overwhelming the person with arguments or continual pressure, but they didn’t include that one in their statistics.
Because it was on the questionnaire. Maybe they decided not to report it after they saw the results, because they thought the results were damning without that tactic included.
I don’t see that. The study says, “By the start of the second year (lifetime prevalence), 26% and 22% had experienced IR [incapacitated] and FR forcible, respectively.” I don’t call 26% way, way more prevalent than 22%. For that matter, the numbers for the freshman year are 15% incapacitated and 9% forcible; I don’t call that way way more prevalent either.
Where does the Browm paper say they are excluding those 5 of 20 data points? I must be missing it. I also don’t see where they are reporting what questions they are asking. Again, I could be missing it.
And I am getting the prevalence statement from the statement that 83% of the rapes in the Brown study were incapacitated.
Last paragraph of the Methods section:
They are specific in their definitions of FR (forcible rape) and IR (incapacitated rape): threats of violence, use of physical force, victim incapacitation. Overwhelming someone with insults or arguments in order to have sex with them may be objectionable, but it is not included in the definition of forcible or incapacitated rape clearly stated in the paper.
So you are saying that the definition above is clear enough to exclude “overwhelming with arguments”, but not clear enough that we should add the qualifiers to the definition of vaginal, oral or anal penetration?
I’m sorry, Ohiodad51, I don’t understand this question. Could you restate it?
A couple of points. First, I get really tired of people accusing somebody who is skeptical of statistics of being a rape apologist. Is it fair to label those who are skeptical of lower rates in other studies as being rape alarmists? This is not the way to discuss statistics.
I have to say that I would have a lot of trouble building conclusions based on a question asking people if they were “out of it.” I don’t think that’s a very scientific phrase.
I would also like to point out that things get difficult when you include attempted wrongs. It can be very difficult to define what constitutes an attempt legally, and a lay person asked if something was “attempted” may have very different ideas about that. For example, if a predator gets a victim drunk to incapacitation, and then “walks her home,” but nothing happens there because her roommate is in the room, has an attempt occurred? Morally, I’d say it has, but legally, it probably hasn’t. Indeed, the planned victim may not learn that this was probably an attempt until she hears about somebody else whose roommate wasn’t home.
I mostly agree with Hanna that the specifics of the stats don’t matter that much, and that even the low end stats mean that there is a problem that has to be addressed. However, I do think that what responses are most likely to be effective depend on what the problem really is. Thus, I think that you’d respond differently if the bulk of the sexual assaults were caused by (1) serial predators who target multiple victims vs. (2) a rape culture in which large numbers of men engage in assaults. If the former is the key problem, then self-protection and bystander intervention are crucial, while if the latter is the key problem, then education of men about consent is crucial.
@Hunt, ignore the attempts. Look at the people who reported that they were forcibly raped: not attempts, not incapacitated, look at the women who say they were forcibly raped. Fully 6.6% of the women in the Syracuse/Brown study say they were forcibly raped during their freshman year at college (the full year including the summer). If you ignore all the other numbers, you still get that horrifying statistic.
I do agree that we’d be better off knowing whether the bulk of the assaults were perpetrated by serial predators. I’m inclined to believe Lisak, that the majority of rapes are done by serial predators, because a sociopath who intentionally disregards consent is going to keep disregarding consent. For example, if a person thinks it’s all right to force a woman to have oral sex, he’s going to keep thinking it’s all right to force a woman to have oral sex, and he’s going to continue to rape women.
@“Cardinal Fang” Sure. It seems to me that when I quoted the definitional language of “vaginal, oral or anal penetration” to point out that it was broader than the conclusions being drawn from the data (particularly with regard to attempts, a problem with these types of conclusions I apparently share with @Hunt), you indicated that the definition was incomplete, and that the SES survey questions asked for more specific data than the definition called out. Then, when I raised the issue of the Brown survey describing a particular type of conduct “overwhelming with arguments”, you respond by saying that the same definition is clear enough to be exclusionary of that conduct. Maybe this discrepancy is addressed somewhere in the Brown paper that I do not see, but as is I am not convinced that the Brown paper is just reordering data from the SES and calling it something else.
I emailed the study author to clarify the exact definitions they used, and whether a forced French kiss would count as a rape. I also asked whether she had a pointer to the exact survey they used. Hopefully, she’ll get back to me and we can put this to rest.
“(1) serial predators who target multiple victims”
The best evidence points in this direction, right?
Cool. I think we can both answer the question whether a forced french kiss would qualify as rape. The issue is whether someone seeing a neutral question cold “nested within a longer health survey” would read a question with those definitions and answer yes if someone tried to stick his tongue down her throat. I think that is the piece we are stumbling over. We look at the reported results and say of course no one would think that was the case. This is asking about rape. But a properly done survey likely will not be obviously about rape, so the participant probably does not have the same suppositions about the question you or I would have.
@Ohiodad51, suppose the question is as follows:
You would agree, then, that it would be unlikely for someone to answer yes to any of these questions if the act in question was a French kiss? Because nobody thinks a French kiss is oral sex, right?
And you would further agree that if someone answered yes to (d) or (e), that would be rape (or whatever the crime is named in your jurisdiction)?
If we are still talking about the “Syracuse” study, the SES has a question related to kissing in the form,
“Someone fondled, kissed, or rubbed up against the private areas of my body (lips, breast/chest, crotch or butt) or removed some of my clothes without my consent (but did not attempt sexual penetration)”
However, this kissing/fondling question was not included as “rape” in the study results. The authors were quite clear about that. Instead survey respondents needed to respond to one of the questions about oral sex or penetration. Many of the other studies had a similar category that included kissing/fondling. In my summary of the numbers from the studies earlier, note that I listed separate results form this category and the oral/penetration categories.
Yep. Agreed.
My question about the disconnect between the questions in the SES survey and the Brown paper involves the interplay between the first of five types of contact “fondle, kiss or touch sexually”, the first of four perpetrator tactics “overwhelm you with arguments or continual pressure for sex” and the definition of “attempt”. Like @Hunt said above, I just am very leery of trying to quantify attempts. I would just like to see where the Brown paper specifically says what data they collected and how they interpreted it before I am willing to believe numbers that are so high. Honestly, the real mind blowing part is the 15% number for forcible rape/attempted forcible rape and 18% incapacitated rape/attempt in high school. Even assuming a large overlap, we are talking about one in five girls.
Where are they clear about that? Because I don’t see it. And yes, I am referring to the “Syracuse” study as te Brown paper because the lead author was from Brown.
They aren’t as explicit about methodology as some of the other studies, but they do give enough details to make highly likely assumptions about the specific wording. They mention using the SES and counting the following as “rape”:
“vaginal, oral, or anal penetration achieved using threats of violence or use of physical force (FR), or using the tactic of victim incapacitation (IR).”
This wording corresponds to the following questions on the SES:
If you want more explicitly defined wording, there are plenty of other studies that have been mentioned that specify exact wording. One example is the Princeton study at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48599220/SES%20Summary%20Female%20Undergraduates.pdf . Note that one key difference between the wording of the Princeton study and the “Syracuse” one is the Princeton study does not require using force or incapacitation – only " without my consent."
I do and I did. More importantly, my daughter, S1 who is also there, the campus police, health services and administration believe those numbers and are working on them. It is no different than any other coed college with sports and greeks for which these statistics are made available.
Therein lies the difference - I believe all of them, the women who claim to be raped at each college in an anonymous survey, data roughly repeatable across the country. You choose not to. We end up in the same place, most colleges have about the same risk so our kids decide based on other criteria.
Here’s another difference - since my kids expect to see predatory behavior, they know to look for it and are not afraid to intervene, something they both have done.
But, as I pointed out, if you take the methods wording literally, then they DID include “overwhelming someone with insults or arguments etc” in their data of attempted rapes. We know this because they are very specific in labeling what is included in various categories, and frequently link AR/CR (attempted rapes/completed rapes) together, but specifically only exclude the “overwhelming” argument" etc, from the list of completed rapes.