We’ve Been Measuring Rape All

Wrong
The Justice Department survey that tracks instances of
sexual assault has been vastly undercounting.
BY EMILY BAZELON
NOV 19, 2013 11:19 AM

How do you measure rape and sexual assault? It’s a tricky and loaded
question, and the answer impacts a couple of highly charged debates. As in: If
you believe the measurements that say sexual violence against women is
significantly on the wane—as one prominent national survey shows—then you
might argue against spending a lot of money fighting it. Or you might
argue, as Slate’s Amanda Hess does, that binge drinking among women
doesn’t really explain the problem of sexual assault, since the drinking has
increased even as the rape numbers have fallen.

On the other hand, if you’re worried that the same measurement tool—the
Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey—is vastly
undercounting sexual violence against women, especially when it comes at
the hands of men they know and in the company of drinking or drugs, then
you might agree with Emily Yoffe that it’s time to stop letting “a misplaced fear
of blaming the victim” prevent college educators—and the rest of us—from
warning “inexperienced young women that when they get wasted, they are
putting themselves in potential peril.”

ow helpful, then, that the Justice Department asked the National Research
Council (part of the National Academies, which also includes the National
Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine) to study how successfully
the federal government measures rape. The answer has just arrived, in a
report out Tuesday with the headline from the press release: “The National
Crime Victimization Survey Is Likely Undercounting Rape and Sexual
Assault.” We’re not talking about small fractions—we’re talking about the kind
of potentially massive underestimate that the military and the Justice
Department have warned about for years—and that could be throwing a
wrench into the effort to do the most effective type of rape prevention.

The NCVS statistics show the rate of completed and attempted rape in the
United States declining from a high of 5 percent of girls and women victimized
annually in 1995 to a low of about 2 percent from 2005 to the present. Sounds
good, right—men behaving better, women protecting themselves more. But
here are the flaws that call the nice-sounding stats into doubt: The NCVS is
designed to measure all kinds of crime victimization. The questions it poses
about sexual violence are embedded among questions that ask about lots of
other types of crime. For example:

(Other than any incidents already mentioned,) has anyone attacked or

threatened you in any of these ways: a) with any weapon, for instance, a gun
or knife, b) with anything like a baseball bat, frying pan, scissors, or stick, c) by
something thrown, such a rock or bottle, d) include any grabbing, punching, or
choking, e) any rape, attempted rape or other type of sexual attack, f) any face
to face threats, OR g) any attack or threat or use of force by anyone at all?
That’s not a good way to prompt women (or men) to report nonconsensual
sex, broadly speaking, especially if they haven’t previously gone to the police
—as most rape victims don’t. As the new report puts it: “This context may
inhibit reporting of incidents that the respondent does not think of as criminal,
did not report to the police, or does not want to report to police.”

The NCVS also doesn’t include scenarios in which a victim is unable to

consent to sex because she or he is “drunk, high, drugged, or passed out.”
And the NCVS doesn’t do enough to provide survey-takers with privacy. They
can’t quietly check off a box on a self-administered questionnaire—they have
to answer questions out loud over the phone. These features of the survey
have also been shown to inhibit victims from responding.

Here’s how to fix this, the National Research Council panel says: Conduct a
survey of rape and sexual assault separately from other kinds of crime. The
best way to get an accurate count is to frame the questions in a “neutral
context, such as a health survey.” Instead of asking, Have you been raped?
the survey tool should ask questions about specific behavior, for
example: When this incident happened, were you passed out from drinking or
taking drugs? This gives room for survey-takers who might not call what
happened to them “rape” to provide a more accurate measure of how many
people are actually victims of nonconsensual sex. And they should be able to
enter their answers on their own, on a computer, rather than over the phone.

There is, in fact, an existing survey that has many of the attributes the NCVS
currently lacks. It’s administered by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and it’s called the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence
Survey. (NISVS is the acronym. Apologies for the alphabet soup.) NISVS
“represents the public health perspective,” as Tuesday’s report puts it, and it
asks questions about specific behavior, including whether the survey-taker
was unable to consent to sex because he or she had been drinking or taking
drugs. NISVS was first conducted in 2010, so it doesn’t go back in time the
way the NCVS numbers do. But here’s the startling direct comparison
between the two measures: NISVS counted 1.27 million total sexual acts of
forced penetration for women over the past year (including completed,
attempted, and alcohol or drug facilitated). NCVS counted only 188,380 for
rape and sexual assault. And the FBI, which collects its data from local law
enforcement, and so only counts rapes and attempted rapes that have been
reported as crimes, totaled only 85,593 for 2010.

It’s a real cause for alarm that there is such a huge discrepancy between the
national survey that most closely follows the approach recommended by the
experts and the ones that don’t, yet are more often cited. The bottom line is
that women are still experiencing date rape or acquaintance rape or gray rape
—whatever you want to call it—in dismayingly large numbers. As Christopher
Krebs, a sexual violence researcher at RTI International, puts it, “We all know
that rape and sexual assault are the most underreported crimes in the world,
and it’s very hard to say that the problem is declining. The NCVS data could
be missing a lot.” And especially critical: The NCVS doesn’t directly capture
the instances in which drugs or alcohol leave women less able to defend
themselves. Let me say that again: The national data about rape that gets
cited over and over again doesn’t ask a single question about whether a victim
was unable to consent because of drugs or alcohol, even though that is a
major risk factor. The NCVS fails to see the full range of nonconsensual sex
that should concern us. It also doesn’t accurately reflect the circumstances in
which this kind of rape occurs—another important function that a tool like this
should serve.

In the vast majority of sexual assaults, Krebs says, the victim knows the
offender. And sometimes she may not remember exactly what happened—
because her memory is blurred by intoxication. That’s why Emily Yoffe called
for rape prevention education that reaches women as well as men. Not
instead of men—of course we need to make clear that men who force sex are
fully responsible for their violence, no matter what the circumstances. But we
also should treat women as fully capable of agency by giving them the
information they need to understand that binge drinking is a risk factor for
sexual assault. I’m the mother of sons, not daughters. It is absolutely my
responsibility to teach my boys that there is no excuse—none—for having sex
unless they can be absolutely sure the other person wants to. But if I had girls,
I would want to open their eyes to the reality that drinking to the point of
passing out will make them more vulnerable. That doesn’t mean blaming
them. It means arming them. The number in this piece that’s probably the
most accurate count—1.27 million women sexually assaulted per year—
underscores the urgency.