William T. O’Donohue - Handbook of Sexual Assault and Sexual Assault Prevention

Any field of science is not without its controversies and the field of sexual assault research is no exception. This section will provide an overview of eight important but controversial issues in the contemporary sexual assault field. Further research that provides a basis for increased understanding and perhaps resolving these controversies represents an important path forward for advancing the science around sexual assault and sexual assault prevention.

Epidemiology is the scientific study of the incidence and prevalence of health problems. Incidence is defined as the frequency of new cases of the phenomenon and is usually given with respect to both a specific time-period, e.g., the incidence of sexual assault in a one-year period would be the rate of new cases of sexual assault in that time-period; as well as by the size of the population, e.g., the incidence of sexual assault is x within a year for the y million female undergraduate students in the United States. Prevalence, on the other hand, is the number of cases that are current, which is a combination of new cases plus previous cases. Prevalence in some sense is a cumulative numberwith lifetime prevalence providing just thatthe frequency of sexual assault occurring sometime in an individuals life.

Obviously, within the epidemiology of sexual assault there are a number of complex issues that need to handled well to derive accurate numbers: (a) how sexual assault is definede.g., does any sort of unwanted sexual contact count, e.g., does an unwanted kiss on a date count just as does forced vaginal penetration, or does an inappropriate touching of a chest when 5 by a 4-year-older sibling count as a case of sexual assault (or should it count as child sexual abuse, a different phenomenon, or as problematic sex play?) Sexual assault can be a vague term and it is useful to be more specific and clear about how this term is operationalizede.g., is penetration involved in the statistic or simply any unwanted touching? One reason so many incidences are not reported as assault is that the recipient does not label them as such. Others indicate that the incidents are not significant enough to be reported (e.g., an unwanted kiss on a date). Perhaps other distinctions between sexual assault and unwanted sexual touching are needed something like unwanted minor sexual advances during a date. The latter are in no way being excused or condonedjust distinguished from something that is more serious. Second, should every self-report of sexual assault count as a true incidence or should some sort of screen or some sort of additional burden of proof be met, i.e., only founded cases that involve some sort of positive finding from some sort of reasonable investigation are included in the statistic? Should reported cases be used, or should self-report data of unreported cases also be used; or both? If formal reports of sexual assault are used, how does one deal with the fact that many self-reported instances of unwanted sexual contact are never formally reported at all: does one include in these epidemiological numbers only reported cases (assuming all are true), or does one take some sort of estimate of the number of unreported cases (e.g., only one in 16 cases is reported; therefore, every reported case is multiplied by 16) and use this estimate to calculate incidence or prevalence? A further nuance to this issue is that Koss and colleagues (1987) in a classic study found that the report of sexual assault is subject to a number of important methodological variables such as the wording of questions (use of the word rape vs. use of something like unwanted sexual contact) as well as assessment strategy (face to face interviews vs. questionnaires) and thus these methodological characteristics can influence the epidemiological numbers reported.

It is not the purpose of this section to clear up the numerous and complex controversies concerning the epidemiology of sexual assault. It is to say, however, that in science as well as any rational debate, accuracy and clarity are desirable characteristics. Perhaps the function of the phrase 1 in 4 women will be raped is to have an important and desirable rhetorical function: individuals ought not to minimize this problem; it is a problem that ought to be taken seriously: sexual assault clearly occurs all too frequently. However, the persuasive and informative function ought to be achieved with accurate numbers with clearly defined terms. Moreover, there does not seem to be any cutoff that sexual assault advocates ought to be worried about, e.g., no one has argued that if only 1 in 200 individuals are sexually assaulted the problem is then unimportant. Scholars in the field are encouraged to use accurate numbers and precise terms regarding the incidence and prevalence of sexual assault, communicate assumptions or problems with these numbers, so that only clear accurate information is being disseminated.