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Revision as of 11:13, 29 September 2015 editMattnad (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers7,755 edits Reverts: replies.← Previous edit Revision as of 20:50, 29 September 2015 edit undoNblund (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers5,578 edits RevertsNext edit →
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Please comment on the new AfD (for TNCARM, not Campus sexual assault) discussion at ]. ] (]) 20:36, 1 September 2015 (UTC) Please comment on the new AfD (for TNCARM, not Campus sexual assault) discussion at ]. ] (]) 20:36, 1 September 2015 (UTC)



== Reverts == == Reverts ==
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::::::::::::About Kentucky, I want to include their findings since they are topical. The original sentence is a good start, and we can qualify it based on differences in approach. And for the record, your concerns about differences in methodology and scope did not prevent you from adding this line, "Other research creates estimates ranging anywhere from 10% to as many as 29% of women having been victims of rape or attempted rape since starting college" to the prevalence section. Neither of those stats are qualified in the least. We have no idea what they are measuring (including definitions), when, where, or how. It would seem you have differing standards when it comes to detail in the article. It's a source of frustration for me here.] (]) 11:12, 29 September 2015 (UTC) ::::::::::::About Kentucky, I want to include their findings since they are topical. The original sentence is a good start, and we can qualify it based on differences in approach. And for the record, your concerns about differences in methodology and scope did not prevent you from adding this line, "Other research creates estimates ranging anywhere from 10% to as many as 29% of women having been victims of rape or attempted rape since starting college" to the prevalence section. Neither of those stats are qualified in the least. We have no idea what they are measuring (including definitions), when, where, or how. It would seem you have differing standards when it comes to detail in the article. It's a source of frustration for me here.] (]) 11:12, 29 September 2015 (UTC)


:If you're not attributing it to another source, then its a novel synthesis: you're emphasizing an aspect of the study that is not emphasized by the authors themselves, in order to imply something that the authors would probably dispute.
I think I've been fairly clear that I'm not saying that we should keep this out of the article, I'm saying we should present as a common complaint among critics of these kinds of surveys that dates all the way back to the work by Koss ( ), Cathy Young made the same criticism of the NCWSV a year ago ().

:These sorts of responses are frequently cited by critics of these studies to suggest that the incidents being measure are relatively benign, but experts doubt that is the case. From the previously cited article by Fisher:
{{Quote box
|quote= First, a salient research issue is what students mean when they define incidents as not serious enough to report. For conservatives, the phrase "not serious" is taken in a strictly literal sense as meaning that the incidents were unimportant. For feminists, however, such a response may merely indicate a false consciousness expressed by women acculturated to see their victimization as somehow acceptable. It may also reflect a rational assessment in which female victims decide that reporting coerced sexuality is not worth turning in fellow students when such an act may incur negative reactions from their peers and no real action from the criminal justice system. That is, the events may be appraised as lacking seriousness not according to an objective standard but relative to what reporting the incidents actually entails. In any case, before definitive interpretations can be ventured, detailed qualitative studies need to be undertaken of women’s cognitive understandings of sexual victimization incidents
}}
:Your example isn't really analogous: there really isn't research that tracks false reporting of rape in surveys, and researchers don't generally believe that these surveys contain a large number of false reports. If those materials existed, I would support presenting these criticisms in a separate section.
The original statement about the Kentucky surveys made an invalid comparison, I don't really think its a good starting point. It seems extraneous, but, if you want to include it, it should be compared to the analogous finding in the AAU report. 20:50, 29 September 2015 (UTC)



New article in Huffington Post Blog noting the discrepancy between the claims made by the AAU researchers and the mainstream reporting on the study. ] (]) 04:24, 29 September 2015 (UTC) New article in Huffington Post Blog noting the discrepancy between the claims made by the AAU researchers and the mainstream reporting on the study. ] (]) 04:24, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

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Perpetrator demographics

I added a bit more detail to the section. Unfortunately it has as little to do with demographics as what was there before. Does anyone have sources for actual perpetrator demographics, or if that is unavailable, a better idea for the name of the section? DPRoberts534 (talk) 06:49, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

I'd expect that demographics would closely match the student population. Ideally if we have it, we'd want to index it. But I've never seen that data, probably because of the reasons I mention.Mattnad (talk) 12:19, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
There should be some mention of the suspect characteristics in the Clery Act disclosures -- if someone can track those down. I haven't seen much research suggesting that there are major differences in terms of race, income, nationality, or age of perpetrators.
This section could be combined with some of the material in the "risk factors" section and placed under a "perpetrator characteristics" section -- the research does indicate that there are certain attitudinal and behavioral characteristics that are correlated with committing sexual assault (alcohol use, fraternity membership, attitudes toward women). This RAND report is a few years old, but section 3 has a fairly detailed literature review on the perpetrator risk factors. Nblund (talk) 17:16, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
I think that's fair, although I would characterize those as behavior rather than demographic. So in the one study we have of African American schools, the rate of SA is lower due in part (according to RS) to lower drug and alcohol use. Mattnad (talk)
I agree. Does lumping the behavior and demographics together under "perpetrator characteristics" work, then? Nblund (talk) 15:51, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Yep. And thanks for the Wikitable tip.Mattnad (talk) 16:38, 30 July 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the RAND report link. The chapter on perpetrators indexes many studies on the subject. It does note that fraternity membership was correlated in some studies but not in others. DPRoberts534 (talk) 05:59, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

The New Campus Anti-Rape Movement

The "Student and organizational activism" section links to The New Campus Anti-Rape Movement, hereafter referred to as TNCARM. TNCARM is book-title-capitalized because it is a specific term used by Caroline Heldman, professor of politics at Occidental College. But the article isn't about Heldman's lectures. Instead it summarizes the contents of the campus sexual assault article, adds in a few well-referenced sentences about campus groups working together, and then completes its thesis with some original research and speculation. Then a criticism section, obligatory for this topic. In my opinion, if it isn't a straight-up example of a coatrack, then it is likely to become one in the future.

I bring this to you for three reasons. First, I am interested in hearing other points of view about the quality of the article from folks who may have more insight into campus activism. Second, if my assessment is correct, what is the correct venue for resolving the problems listed? Solutions I see are: deleting, merging, renaming, and/or rewriting the article so it stays on its topic (Heldman's published work).

Third, this serves as notice that unless anyone objects, I am going to move the well-referenced sentences about campus groups working together into this article's activism section and then turn TNCARM into a redirect. DPRoberts534 (talk) 03:41, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I did a quick search on "The New Campus Anti-Rape Movement" in quotes on Google and found 741 results. It seems to be a real thing, but the problem I see with the article, is that the news sources cited by the writers don't support the existence of the "The New Campus Anti-Rape Movement" as a "thing". I think this article could be saved, and I think that the people who originally worked on it deserve some time to fix the problems. I'm not an expert on the subject, but I've done some style and wording improvements and fixed some errors. I think we should give the article some time to mature—or at the very least—run a formal AFD so people who are passionate about the subject can have a chance to argue their points and make improvements. Carl Henderson (talk) 05:10, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for your cleanup work. I agree that it is a term that generates search results. All results that I saw were either links to Heldman and Dirks' lectures and publications, articles/blogs about those publications, or the Misplaced Pages article. So, that means notability is debatable, which is half of the problem. The other half is that the article does not even mention Heldman and Dirks, their book (previously titled TNCARM), or Heldman's lectures. DPRoberts534 (talk) 05:30, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
I think a merge is in order. I had the same thoughts a while ago, but then forgot about it. It's relevant only in the context of the broader topic and the current spin-off article is a stub, and has been for months. Mattnad (talk) 10:29, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
I do think it might be a good idea to let the move discussion ripen for a little while and see if anyone else has any specific objections or if there is important additional material that could be added to the entry.
That said: while I see your point on the issue with TNCARM, if a merge occurs, it seems like it would be merged with the existing entry on the existing Anti-Rape Movement page rather than with this entry. By my reading, TNCARM is about the movement itself, whereas this article is primarily about the crime of sexual assault on college campuses. Hedlund seems to be arguing that the "New Campus Anti-Rape Movement" represents a new "wave" in a movement that dates back to the Civil War era -- akin to the idea of waves in the feminist movement. It makes sense to put all of that under the general heading of anti-rape activism. Nblund (talk) 14:07, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Merging to Anti-Rape Movement seems better than merging it here. DPRoberts534 (talk) 17:09, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
Would it be a problem to post a notice about this discussion to the talk pages of the people who initially created/expanded the article, or to Wiki Project Feminism? Carl Henderson (talk) 19:53, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
I don't see an issue with that. The more the merrier. As I reviewed the article again, most of it is set-up (explaining the problem of sexual assault on campuses) and then criticisms. The real meat of the article is actually mostly examples of activism, some of which use source articles that make no mention of the "movement" per se. Right now, it seems more like a concept that a few people have heard about, but has not become a mainstream expression. So really it's more about increased activism around campus sexual assault, which makes more sense here IMHO.Mattnad (talk) 21:27, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree that there are many reliable sources that have covered the resurgent campus anti-rape movement over the past few years.
@DPRoberts534: I object to redirecting the other article here — while the topic ought be mentioned in the campus sexual assault article, there is easily enough material to support a stand-alone article for the new movement. That article could use some work though. It should definitely include mention of Heldman (who places the new movement's beginning in 2013) and should perhaps be renamed to a generic title. The surge in anti-rape activity on campuses has been documented by many sources besides Heldman, and includes art/activism like the Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) as well as 'yes means yes' affirmative consent campaigns. gobonobo 21:11, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
@Gobonobo: what do you think about Nblund's proposal to merge it with Anti-Rape Movement? DPRoberts534 (talk) 15:32, 28 August 2015 (UTC)
The anti-rape movement article already has too much emphasis on US examples, so merging content there would exacerbate that particular problem. I think the crux of the issue is whether the modern campus anti-rape movement can be considered discretely as a valid spin-off article. There seems to be enough sourcing out there to turn it into a robust article. I don't think Heldman was to first to recognize the resurgence of anti-rape activism though and question whether the movement coalesced as late as 2013. So maybe a name change and slight adjustment in the scope of the article would be in order. There are other possibilities as well, such as creating an article for Campus anti-rape movement or forking the US content into a dedicated article. In any case, I think a decision to delete/redirect/merge should come from an AfD rather than an unrelated talk page so as to maximize community input. gobonobo 19:01, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on the new AfD (for TNCARM, not Campus sexual assault) discussion at Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/The New Campus Anti-Rape Movement. DPRoberts534 (talk) 20:36, 1 September 2015 (UTC)


Reverts

There have been some reverts to eliminate some of the nuance of the recent studies:

  • : Well, here's the quote from the Washington Post that supports that, "Researchers acknowledged the possibility of an overstated victimization rate because there was evidence that hundreds of thousands of students who ignored the electronic questionnaire were less likely to have suffered an assault." I'd be interested in how what was written is not supported by the source. If it is not, then how? We can edit accordingly rather than eliminate it.
  • This change was made because an editor didn't like the source, arguing it's editorial. So here's the same information from the study itself. On page 110, which itemized why someone did not report an incident, 58.6% indicated, "I did not think it was serious enough to report". It's not an editorial statement. It's right from the study. I can provide a citation for that and will if that will satisfy, but Misplaced Pages does not have a prohibition on article or editorials just because an editor doesn't like the source. What we require for is verifiability. Unless someone can say it's not verifiable, then it's POV to exclude.
  • removes a concurrent 2015 survey. It was presented as a different survey, and if the editor had looked at the title of the section, it falls under that section nicely (2015 Campus Surveys. If he or she wants to qualify it with more information, that's fine, but anyone who does survey work knows that low sample rates can lead to reporting bias and that highlights the differences. Removing it because it's different is not supportable given the topic.Mattnad (talk) 18:21, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
  • Regarding point 1: I missed this. I self-reverted, but reworded a little to attribute the statement to researchers, and to avoid too closely paraphrasing the source.
  • Regarding 2: I agree that this is giving undue weight: this is a major academic study, the criticism being cited applies to every sexual assault survey discussed in this section. The consensus among researchers is that this really isn't a problem with the surveys: people often downplay even very serious sexual victimization because of guilt, fear, or embarrassment. The implication that this invalidates the surveys is just not supported by existing evidence.
  • Regarding 3: Perhaps I'm misreading this, but according to the link they cite in the article the 5% figure for Kentucky is the number of students, both male and female, who were raped in the current school year (see: link). This is actually higher than the comparable finding in the AAU surveys (3.2% vs 5%) and the CSA. Nblund (talk) 22:25, 26 September 2015 (UTC)
Thank you for self reverting the first. On the second and third items, your reasoning is different from the other editor's (which suggests that his or her reasoning was reflexive), but let me address each:
On the Majority of respondents not thinking their assault was worth reporting, this is not a criticism at all. It's a detail from the survey that's not presented anywhere else in the article. We are often told that the majority of assaults go unreported (true), and include that as some indictment of the state of current affairs, but we never the reason, or at least not in a quantified way. This is actually good news in a sense, since we now have a quantified level that most sexual assaults in these surveys did rise to a level of seriousness for the respondents to report. It's not WP:Undue per the guidelines: It's neither a fringe source nor presented as an opinion: it's coming from the same survey that you have no issue including high level numbers. That it has not been detailed in some news reports (although it's covered in one newspaper and several other sites) is no more of a fringe idea than the many stats you have added in the lede that were never reported by secondary news sources and come from more obscure sources than this survey (and are not even explained at all in terms of what they are measuring and where).
On the third revert, this article is about Campus sexual assault - not Campus sexual assault of women only. If you want to add a breakdown of the Kentucky University stats, you can, but as presented made no suggestion that it wasn't the overall numbers. Unlike many surveys in these areas, Kentucky actually got a large sample which is also very notable and makes the results more reliable in comparison to the AAU. If you want to elaborate more on the details, fine, but eliminating a documented and topical survey from the article seems excessive. Mattnad (talk) 15:06, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
A majority (58%) of women who gave a "not serious enough to report" response said that they were victims of forcible rapes. We're talking about violent sex crimes here, they're clearly serious from a criminal justice standpoint. Numerous academic articles have looked at the way victims of crimes minimize including serious violent crimes (examples: here and here). This is also true for victims of incest, domestic violence, and child victims of sexual assault. If we want to include some discussion of the subjective experiences of sexual assault by victims, we should do it using good quality material and we should make it clear that this "not serious" response isn't something unique to this particular study. It is UNDUE to have coverage of an important topic in the study of rape and sexual assault be limited to a single editorial from a right-leaning paper.
Regarding the Kentucky survey: Kentucky doesn't provide that breakdown. I'm not saying it should be excluded because it measures sexual assaults against men, I'm saying that it is misleading to present it as though it contradicts the findings of the AAU surveys. If we use an apples-to-apples comparison and look at the combined rate since the start of the school year for men and women experiencing rape, that is actually higher than the comparable rate reported in the AAU surveys, not lower (see table 3-11 on page 67 of the full report)Nblund (talk) 23:28, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
On your first point, I'm not depending on an editorial (it's actually a news report). I'm looking at the study, as have you. On adding qualifiers, you'd be veering into original research citing sources that do not mention this study or come from it (and the study did not say it was forceable rape, you did). BTW, only 0.3% of college women and 0.2% of men reported coercive penetration since enter college according to table 3-14/15 on pages 73-74 which I think I'll add to the section. That written, let's see what you have in mind as a qualifier including the source. I'll add that when you look at other categories of assault like touching (nearly twice the reported rate vs. penetration), the "not serious enough" reason goes up to 75%. I bring that up because the 20% overall stat for women is presented in the article includes touching. On your second point, the section is not just the AAU study but recent campus surveys. So Kentucky presents another study at a college (with a better sample size at that). If you want to make it easier to compare, then you can add the combined Male/Female assault rates to the AAU study section (note that Table 3-11 you bring up is only sexual penetration from the AAU study, not Kentucky, and does not include touching).Mattnad (talk) 00:54, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
The study does call it rape (see page VIII of the introduction) so does common sense. This is a stat that is included in the AAU report, but the conclusion you're drawing isn't something that comes from that report, it comes from an opinion piece. Its also not a conclusion supported by the existing consensus among experts in this field.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting this argument just needs caveats. This isn't a critique unique to this study, so it doesn't make sense to present it as though it is. Its a fairly well-researched phenomenon, the same question is presented in the NCWSV and the CSA, and the results are similar in both. This exact criticism has been cited previously by critics of this sort of sexual assault study, dating all the way back to Christina Hoff Sommers in the 70's. Researchers generally view it as a product of minimization. I'm open to including this discussion in the entry, but it shouldn't ignore the findings of experts in the field or obscure the reality of the debate.
The 5% stat from the Kentucky study also doesn't appear to include non-consensual touching: page 4 of the executive summary states that " UK Students (n=1,053; 4.9%) reported unwanted sexual experiences (vaginal, oral, or anal sex)..." -- it appears they're discussing penetration exclusively. I think the documentation here is kind of lacking, but, if anything, it appears to be higher than the comparable AAU estimate. Nblund (talk) 02:03, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm not drawing any conclusions. I'm just for providing a detail from the report that puts the numbers in better context per the study and not some unrelated original research coatrack. So, based on your reading, does the AAU study not report that most respondents that were categorized as victims who did not report answered because they didn't think it was serious enough? I'm not understanding your objection to the source. Do you think that the AAU is lying? And yes, Kentucky used the same definitions of sexual assault as the DOJ and Harvard School of Public Health. If you want to add that (per the source) we can.Mattnad (talk) 02:34, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
The statement that was removed was sourced to the Washington Examiner. Its almost a verbatim quote from that source, and the wording appears to imply that the researchers characterized things as sexual assault when they weren't. The consensus among researchers is that these are serious crimes that respondents downplay out of guilt or shame. If you want to include a statement about the reasons people choose not to report sexual assault to the police, that sounds fine, but it should be done in a way that accurately characterizes the views of experts in the field.
I cited previous research on this topic by BS Fisher, who is one of the most recognized experts in this field. I don't think you're going to get very far arguing that this study is coattrack while simultaneously claiming a story from a relatively obscure conservative paper warrants inclusion.
What, exactly, would you want to say with the inclusion of the info from Kentucky? The previous version seemed to imply that the findings contradicted the findings of the AAU study, but, if anything, the resulting estimate is higher, not lower. I'm not opposed to including it as long as it is accurately characterized -- but it kind of seems pointless. Nblund (talk) 02:54, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
I'm talking about using the survey as the citation, not the Examiner. I think you don't like is that the majority of women didn't think their experience was that serious and you want to keep that out of the article, or try to suggest that all of them might in retrospect realize they were horribly assaulted via qualification. That's OR when attached to this particular survey since Fisher didn't review this particular work. For an example of how your approach could be used in a way you'd dislike, what if we followed every marcro assault rate report with research on false reporting, etc. There's research out there that tracks that, and if someone is biased enough as an editor, they could insist on it. But it would be POV, OR, and rightfully removed. If you want to include Fisher, we can bring in a comment about Fisher's findings where appropriate separately.
About Kentucky, I want to include their findings since they are topical. The original sentence is a good start, and we can qualify it based on differences in approach. And for the record, your concerns about differences in methodology and scope did not prevent you from adding this line, "Other research creates estimates ranging anywhere from 10% to as many as 29% of women having been victims of rape or attempted rape since starting college" to the prevalence section. Neither of those stats are qualified in the least. We have no idea what they are measuring (including definitions), when, where, or how. It would seem you have differing standards when it comes to detail in the article. It's a source of frustration for me here.Mattnad (talk) 11:12, 29 September 2015 (UTC)


If you're not attributing it to another source, then its a novel synthesis: you're emphasizing an aspect of the study that is not emphasized by the authors themselves, in order to imply something that the authors would probably dispute.

I think I've been fairly clear that I'm not saying that we should keep this out of the article, I'm saying we should present as a common complaint among critics of these kinds of surveys that dates all the way back to the work by Koss ( example), Cathy Young made the same criticism of the NCWSV a year ago (here).

These sorts of responses are frequently cited by critics of these studies to suggest that the incidents being measure are relatively benign, but experts doubt that is the case. From the previously cited article by Fisher:

First, a salient research issue is what students mean when they define incidents as not serious enough to report. For conservatives, the phrase "not serious" is taken in a strictly literal sense as meaning that the incidents were unimportant. For feminists, however, such a response may merely indicate a false consciousness expressed by women acculturated to see their victimization as somehow acceptable. It may also reflect a rational assessment in which female victims decide that reporting coerced sexuality is not worth turning in fellow students when such an act may incur negative reactions from their peers and no real action from the criminal justice system. That is, the events may be appraised as lacking seriousness not according to an objective standard but relative to what reporting the incidents actually entails. In any case, before definitive interpretations can be ventured, detailed qualitative studies need to be undertaken of women’s cognitive understandings of sexual victimization incidents

Your example isn't really analogous: there really isn't research that tracks false reporting of rape in surveys, and researchers don't generally believe that these surveys contain a large number of false reports. If those materials existed, I would support presenting these criticisms in a separate section.

The original statement about the Kentucky surveys made an invalid comparison, I don't really think its a good starting point. It seems extraneous, but, if you want to include it, it should be compared to the analogous finding in the AAU report. 20:50, 29 September 2015 (UTC)


New article in Huffington Post Blog noting the discrepancy between the claims made by the AAU researchers and the mainstream reporting on the study. DPRoberts534 (talk) 04:24, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

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