Abstract
In 1987, when Koss, Gidycz, and Wisniewski published their epidemiological study of sexual assault on college campuses, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, their findings startled the scientific community and the nation at large. Results indicated that, since their fourteenth birthdays, 27% of college women recalled an incident that met the legal definition of rape, including attempts. In a 12-month period, 76 per 1,000 college women experienced one or more attempted or completed rapes. Of these rapes, 8 of 10 involved someone the victim knew, and more than half(57%) of all the rapes involved adate. Many people have trouble believing that this level of assault could exist without coming to the attention of police, parents, or institutional authorities. One of them is University of California social welfare professor Neil Gilbert, who wonders why rape, if it is as common as Koss and colleagues suggest, has not been routinely reported to justice authorities. But before we can discuss the problems related to reporting rape, and thus the problems that the study faced and surmounted, we must consider how rape is defined.
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