The number of freshman women surveyed at Michigan is a tad small, something like 500 freshman women.
The problem is that you can’t add up the numbers. One incident can be reported several times to check several boxes. My surmise is that the rape incidence at UM is about 2%. Which is very high.
The problem with the broader concepts and vague definitions is that they create very high numbers which then get mis-used and distorted beyond credulity. Like the 1-in-5 stat.
Even though well done, the UM survey suffers from this. UM’s president reports that:
“20% of undergraduate female students say they experienced some sort of nonconsensual sexual behavior in the past year and 12% of female undergraduates say they experienced nonconsensual sexual penetration.”
That sounds like 12% have been raped. But we know that the 12% number includes incidents that are nothing like rape. Many of those are in fact consensual even though labeled as nonconsensual.
“@Hanna in post 1896 did you mean the accused should talk about it?”
Yes, where it is true, it’s a smart thing to mention in an explanation essay. For many of my clients, it is true. The alleged victim is obviously miserable and the accused is genuinely sorry to see that.
Which, assuming the women were selected as part of a random (or random enough) sample, from a population the size of the female student population at UM, gives 95% confidence that the margin of error is no greater than ±4.30%. (If they only surveyed full-time students it’s a lower margin of error, but only very slightly lower.) Really, you can do rather amazing things with surprisingly small samples.
I’m sorry, I can’t help myself…
Were the women selected based on taking a woman studies class?
And yes, a sample can represent a population, but if you take a random sample of people leaving a basketball practice and ask if they like small cars, you might get a different random sample than people leaving gymnastics practice.
@Northwesty, the numbers aren’t supposed to be added up. 
The survey is about behaviors. There can be multiple behaviors during one incident.
Having said this…it is difficult to come up with 2 percent as the rape percentage. Looks higher. In order to come up with 2 percent, you would have to come to conclusions like 80 percent of the incapacitated people were forced and those that were threatened with force were also forced. Those are low probablity conclusions.
I just put this link up in the wrong place.
This is how UMich handles sexual misconduct.
One expulsion while two non consenting penetrations. Hmmmm…well UMich knows the cases.
http://hr.umich.edu/oie/TIXannualreport-11.24.2014-FINAL.pdf
Many? You don’t know that. Notice that these are incidents that the person labelled as nonconsensual.
“In the past 12 months, has a man put his ***** into your vagina, or has anyone inserted fingers or objects into your vagina without your consent by…" (my bold)
It’s more than a little presumptuous to assume that you know better than the participant about whether she consented, in “many” of the cases.
These numbers are incredibly high. We are talking about a 12 month period.
One more thing about how UMich handles these cases. Under the preponderance of evidence standard, The accuser won 41 percent of the cases that were investigated. The accused won 55 percent. One case closed without a finding.
And I guess there was only one case of unwanted sexual penetration and the accused was expelled.
Fang – the majority of the 12% would appear to be cases where the victim at least “acquiesced” after being subjected to “verbal pressuring” alone.
A person listening to the UM President’s speech would be suprised to learn that such acquiescense incidents are included in the bucket of “nonconsensual sexual penetration.” Which any person would fairly expect to mean “rape.”
Hmmmmm…
And I looked at the survey…
@northwesty, after reading your posts, unconsensual sex is a much bigger problem than I thought. And I thought unconsensual sex was a very big problem.
Using verbal pressure and the use of alcohol and drugs does not mean the sex is consensual. Obviously, there are times at least one of the partners does not think the sex is consensual. I skipped over this earlier. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
There is a failure to communicate between partners. Or maybe somebody is not listening. Or maybe the guys know the sex isn’t consensual. @northwesty, I know you don’t think coercion is ok. Whether we call verbal pressure rape or not, there is a lot of nonconsensual sex going on. Nonconsensual sex is ok because it is caused by the use of words? Or substances?
@northwesty, you want to label some nonconsenual sex acts as something other than rape? Do you want to label nonconsensual sex consensual?
Was this false?
This was a good survey. I like seeing the breakdown of different nonconsensual sex.
What is “verbal pressure?” In what way does it render sex nonconsensual? Remember, threat of force is a different category.
The problem here is that if you want the numbers to be big, they can be big. You just have to include a broad range of things, like verbal pressure, kissing, groping, etc. If you want them to be small, they can be pretty small. You just limit it to rapes by force and by incapacitation narrowly defined. And then we can argue about it. The bigger problem is that it affects our impressions of what to do about it.
As an analogy, let’s imagine a survey that says that 1 in four college students are victims of a “property crime” while in college. If this meant that a quarter of students were mugged at gunpoint, this would be a huge problem, and you’d never want to send your kid to that college. If it included any theft of any item, then you might be less concerned. If you learned that it also included situations in which students’ property was damaged by the actions of other students, you might be even less concerned.
Stark – 8% of the “nonconsensual” incidents involved “verbal pressuring” and no physical force. Verbal pressuring involves a number of potential things. Including stuff like the threat to end the relationship if there’s no sex.
I would not call that type of incident “nonconsensual” and Fang would not either, although the survey does and invites that response. That is a flaw in the survey and makes that data extremely misleading.
You could call that situation badgered sex. Or verbally coerced sex. Or unwanted but consensual sex. Or regret sex with a jerk. Or consent to sex obtained in a manipulative manner. Or consensual/nonconsensual sex (which is an oxymoron). Or consent obtained under false pretenses. But you cannot call it nonconsensual sex.
There’s clearly a lot of guys aggressively and successfully seeking consent for sex from women who would rather not. Nothing new about that. While that’s a problem, that isn’t rape or even sexual assualt.
Does begging count as verbal pressuring? (I always hesitate to make any kind of joke in discussions of this topic, of course.)
“As an analogy, let’s imagine a survey that says that 1 in four college students are victims of a “property crime” while in college.”
I’ve made this same point. Shoplifting at the candy store and armed bank robbery are both theft. But not the same thing in terms of severity or what you would do in response.
I really don’t see the point of constructing a survey that by design labels consensual sex as nonconsensual.
Well, a cynical mind would say that the point is to make the numbers big. I suspect the real explanation is that the study designers were talking about and somebody said, “What about verbal pressuring? That’s really bad, too!”
“Does begging count as verbal pressuring?”
“Verbally pressuring you after you said you didn’t want to…”
Hunt – I think a fair reading is that begging would count as verbal pressure.
Stupid survey design just poisons the validity of these studies.
It is very easy to obtain information about situations where females relent in response to some type of verbal pressure tactics. But it is wrong to call that nonconsensual. Sort of Orwellian, actually, to do that.
@Hunt, the numbers are huge without the verbal pressure numbers. The verbal presuure numbers can be zero and the numbers are huge. 
It doesn’t really serve UMich well to have high numbers.
The female students answered the questions in the survey. They answered that the some of the sex acts were nonconsensual.
Many of the sex acts may not be criminal acts but we have cultural issues. UMich is looking at student culture.
Really? Really? Those UMIch numbers aren’t small.