| theprof00 said: Well, look at that 21.6% that's 1-5 isnt it? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you can tell me what 21% is. |
Just wanted to say, I think there are a few issues with the math used to reach this stat. First of all, you need to account for the amount of people who lived during this time period, not the amount who were alive at the end of it. If you are using an 81 as a "span", you have to account for all the women who have died over those 81 years. The average amount of deaths between 1930 and 2016 is about 2million per year, with about half of that being women that would be 1million per year, so add 81million to your sample size. This decreases the lifetime rape rate to about 15.8%.
You also should account for differences in life expectancy over this time period. People who were born back in 1935 didn't live as long as people who were born in 2015. Taking about the median value, you are left with a life expectancy of 75 years instead of 81 years. Doing some recalculations you are left with a lifetime rape rate of about 14.9%.
Then the variable that is most confounding and difficult to calculate comes into the picture. Not all of those rapes you listed were first time victims. In fact, in victimized populations, rates of revictimization are significantly higher than that of the general population. Numbers I did find for this suggested a wide range of revictimization rates up to 64%, but taking one of the more common numbers I've seen of 20%, you can eliminate 20% of your "victim pool" as redundant. Recalculating with this number leaves you with a lifetime rape rate of about 11.9%.
So by factoring in a few more variables in the BJS data, the lifetime rape/sexual assault rate falls to about 1 in 8.33, or 11.9%
PS: I mostly did this because you already did most of the legwork and I was curious how the numbers would work out. If you can think of any other variables or you see any errors in my math, please call them out
