Sexual Assaults: Knowing The Statistics But More Importantly Changing Them

Katie Hawkins

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Methodology Findings

Victim Of Sexual Assault vs. Sexual Assault While Intoxicated

• Data from the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study, 2001

• 10904 Observations

• 483 Variables

• Survey/Questionnaire

• Questions:

① Have you ever been a victim of sexual assault?

② How many times have you had 5 or more drinks in a row in the past two weeks

I would like to sincerely thank Rachael Barlow for her continuous help throughout my research process.

Throughout a women’s four-year college career, she has a one in four chance of being raped or sexually assaulted. This is a statistic that is not widely known or acknowledged. While there is a significant amount of research and literature on sexual assaults, not all of it is easily accessible. I chose to focus on college sexual assault statistics which also made the research at my disposal minimal. However doing so allows my findings to be relatable to myself and my current college peers. A considerable amount of the literature written on college sexual assaults relates to alcohol abuse and intoxication; therefore I used alcohol as my independent variable due to the constraint by the available data. Although alcohol appears to be the dominant related factor in rapes and sexual assaults, there are also other variables that tend to be overlooked such as misinterpretation, age and gender.

Conclusion

Alcohol is definitely the most commonly related variable to college campus rapes and sexual assaults. However other variables that are overlooked and not addressed as intensely are misinterpretation and the lack of attention towards male sexual assault victims. Research showed that colleges tend to focus a lot more on trying to control alcohol consumption and not give enough attention to rape and sexual assaults specifically.

None Once Twice 3-5 times 6-9 times 10+ times

Not at all 99.1% 98.0% 97.4% 96.8% 96.6% 84.3%

Once .7% 1.6% 2.1% 2.7% 2.3% 10.1%

2-3 times .1% .1% .3% .5% .8% 4.5%

4+ times .1% .3% .2% .0% .3% 1.1%

0 1 2-3 times 4+ times

Intercourse when intoxicated, no consent 7683 264 56 33

Victim of sexual assault 10690 143 23 17

1000

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11000

• These findings are not statistically significant and when the control variable, gender, was added the data is still not statistically significant.

• Cross-Tabulation table between amount of times 5+ alcoholic drinks consumed and victims of sexual assault