Elliot M. Cramer: Invalid survey on rape at UNC

Regarding the Sept. 24 news article “UNC delves into data gleaned from sexual assault survey”: The Association of American Universities released an astonishingly incompetent report claiming that 12.5 percent of UNC undergraduates were victims of rape, i.e. “penetration involving force or incapacitation.”

Any statistician would agree that a survey with a response rate of 18 percent is invalid; it is surprising that Chancellor Carol Folt, a scientist, does not realize this. This low response rate is inconsistent with standards for federal surveys where a response rate of 80 percent has been recommended.

It is obvious that victims of rape are far more likely to respond to a voluntary survey than nonvictims and that the true rate could easily be less than 3 percent. A valid study could have been done with a true random sample of only 500 students.

Over 50 years ago Clark Kerr of University of California Berkeley defined the chancellor’s job as “providing parking for faculty, sex for the students and athletics for the alumni.” The situation has not changed since then, and there is no reason to believe that campus rape is more common now than then or that it is unique to college campuses.

This story was originally published September 30, 2015 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Elliot M. Cramer: Invalid survey on rape at UNC."