Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this... I was doing some research on rape culture, and it's very difficult to get good information. I stumbled on your thoughtful blog via Anonymous Conservative.<br>

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So.. TRIGGER WARNING...<br>

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First, Exhibit A. In this post, you cite seemingly intelligent David Lisak:<br>

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<a href="http://uncabob.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-power-domination-and-control-of-rape.html">http://uncabob.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-power-domination-and-control-of-rape.html</a><br>

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His paper is here:<br>

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<a href="http://www.davidlisak.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/RepeatRapeinUndetectedRapists.pdf">http://www.davidlisak.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/RepeatRapeinUndetectedRapists.pdf</a><br>

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He surveyed 1882 male students at a "mid-sized, urban commuter university." (The sampled students were pedestrians at various places on a campus, and "rape" or "assault" was not mentioned in the survey.)<br>

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To gauge for attempted rape, he asked if the student "had ever tried but not succeeded" in "sexual intercourse" with the woman "by using or threatening to use force, if they did not cooperate."<br>

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To gauge for completed rape, he asked whether they had sex with someone who "didn't want to" under various conditions.<br>

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He found 120 answered yes to the attempted/completed rape questions. (Notably, 80.8% of these were drugs or alcohol.) And 483 instances of attempted or completed rape were reported by those who answered yes.<br>

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[ The interesting part (which you pointed out) is that the admitted rapists tend to be bad people, typically committing multiple rapes, and often committing other offenses. ]<br>

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Lisak says it's tough to generalize the survey results since it's not a random sample (though they seem to match up with other surveys).<br>

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But let's try. If you do, you get an attempted or completed rape rate of 483 / 1882 = 26%. (And adding in sexual assault doesn't seem to increase the number much.) (And this wasn't a race thing-- the sample was 66% white people, and the results didn't seem to vary much across ethnicity.)<br>

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Second, Exhibit B. Let's look at the widely-cited but goofy online surveys (with low response rates, etc.), often criticized by people like Christina Hoff Sommers and even doubted a little bit by the Washington Post.<br>

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Most notably, the Krebs survey (long pdf linked below)<br>

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<a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221153.pdf">https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/221153.pdf</a><br>

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which phrases sexual assault as "sexual contact with you by using physical force or threatening to physically harm you" and finds 12.6% rate of attempted sexual assault and 13.7% rate of actual sexual assault, with much of sexual assault seemingly falling in the "rape" category. So the oft-cited final result is "19% rate of attempted/completed sexual assault" on campuses.<br>

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Similar, but slightly lower results, are in the MIT survey.<br>

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<a href="http://web.mit.edu/surveys/health/">http://web.mit.edu/surveys/health/</a><br>

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I've been very skeptical about these online surveys (e.g. people lying, and, as The Economist says, the wording seems pretty broad).<br>

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So now Exhibit C: we go to the BJS statistic on sexual assault, which comes from the apparently much more rigorous  National Crime Victimization Survey (which is also a self-report survey but is more a general crime survey than a "sex survey" and involves interviews on the phone; it also uses some kind of gentle two-phase technique to try to get the interviewee to admit she was sexually assaulted). This survey uses a broad definition of sexual assault, including nonphysical pressure to engage in sex. The survey is here:<br>

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<a href="http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf">http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf</a><br>

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Now this finds a rate of about 6 per 1000 per year (so that's, say, 2.4% over 4 years of college) for college women. About half are rapes--- so that's 1 - 2% of college women being raped.<br>

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Now as pointed out here in this lawyer blog (and suggested by e.g. George Will) this BJS number makes more sense than the online surveys, because they match up with a 10% reporting rate in college (which seems pretty low but maybe is still plausible):<br>

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<a href="http://blog.bennettandbennett.com/2014/12/one-in-thirty.html">http://blog.bennettandbennett.com/2014/12/one-in-thirty.html</a><br>

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And Exhibit D is your other post on rape where you riff about how women lie about rape<br>

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<a href="http://uncabob.blogspot.com/2014/08/on-raping-women.html">http://uncabob.blogspot.com/2014/08/on-raping-women.html</a><br>

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There seem to be plenty of anecdotes about women lying about rape, even including fishy convictions. For instance, here:<br>

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<a href="http://www.returnofkings.com/52093/how-i-dealt-with-a-false-rape-accusation">http://www.returnofkings.com/52093/how-i-dealt-with-a-false-rape-accusation</a><br>

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which paints false rape accusations as pretty normal in college. And this is yet another reason we should be careful with these statistics.<br>

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Conclusion: My question is, how do you reconcile: <br>

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A) 26% attempted/completed rape rate (from male survey),<br>

B) 19% attempted/completed sexual assault rate (online female survey) and<br>

C) 2 - 3% attempted/completed sexual assault rate (from a BJS survey, and which seems to pass the smell test better).<br>

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It seems to me (C) syncs better with reported sexual assaults rate, the intuition about women exaggerating sexual assault (from Exhibit D), what I've seen on campus, and all these stories about false rape accusations.<br>

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But how is (A) so large? Very confusing.<br>