That’s Mr UD describing a just-released sexual harassment on campus study UD asked him to look at.
She asked him to look at it because its description on PR Web smelled heavily of bullshit:
A study conducted across ten of our nation’s college campuses to determine if they are physically and intellectually safe revealed disturbing levels of intolerance across the board. The Survey of more than 2,600 undergraduates, sponsored by Campus Tolerance Foundation (www.campustolerance.org), was conducted by the FDR Group from October 2008 to January 2009 and revealed the following alarming statistics:
-59% of all students surveyed said they have either witnessed or have been victims of bias incidents on campus;
-62% of women surveyed report that they have been victims of broader sexual harassment or personally know someone who has been; and
-33% of women surveyed were victims of serious sexual harassment — forced sex, attempts to force sex, or attempts to force kissing or fondling — or personally know someone who was
“As a grandmother of children soon to be looking at colleges to attend, I found these Survey results very disturbing, to say the least,” said Marcella Rosen, founder of Campus Tolerance Foundation. “By publicizing these alarming findings, the Foundation hopes that colleges and universities will address bias where it exists, and that parents and students will consider tolerance when selecting a college.”
Bugger me — it’s even got a granny!
Disturbing, alarming, disturbing, alarming. You get one disturbing in the first paragraph, and then a matching disturbing in the last. You get one alarming in the first paragraph and a matching alarming in the last. If you’re not disturbed and alarmed by the time you finish reading this release, you must not be a grandmother.
You must be something evil, like a social scientist who knows bullshit research techniques when he sees them.
A social scientist who says What the hell does intellectually safe mean?
And get a load of these results!
… Ohio State University fared worst (at 69%) when it came to students witnessing or being victims of bias incidents (verbal insult, graffiti, physical threat or physical assault) on campus, followed by Texas A&M (66%), University of Florida (65%), University of Nebraska (64%), George Washington University (60%), University of Minnesota (58%), UCLA (57%), and University of Washington (56%). Harvard fared best (at 40%), followed by Barnard (42%).
On the subject of sexual harassment, an alarming 73% of female students surveyed at George Washington University said that they have experienced or witnessed broader sexual harassment; Barnard was at the low end of the spectrum (at 52%).
Regarding serious sexual harassment (forced sex, attempts to force sex, kissing or fondling), Harvard fared worst, with 45% of female students saying that they had been victims or personally knew a victim, followed by George Washington University (43%), Ohio State University (42%), University of Nebraska (40%), University of Minnesota (35%), UCLA (30%), and the University of Florida (30%). The University of Washington fared best (23%), followed by Barnard and Texas A&M (both 24%).
73% of female students at La Kid’s own GW! My blood ran alarmed when I read that.
But then I read the home page of the organization that did the survey. I looked at the questions they asked. I tried to figure out if the research sample is random. I tried to figure out a lot of things about the research method, but even the section of the website meant to be read by other researchers is completely inadequate as description.
They formulate the questions very cleverly. They bundle into one inquiry about sexual harassment things like forcible kissing (all women have endured some of this at some time — some guy on your first date kisses you when you don’t want him to) and rape; or they bundle seeing offensive graffiti (in no way does this constitute harrassment) and physical assault. And then they report the results in such as way as to mix up mild or non-existent with extreme and hope you don’t notice.
Or they give you alarming, disturbing results like 52% of students at Texas A&M “sometimes or often fear speaking in class because others might disagree with you.”
First, get the sometimes or often. Makes a big difference, don’t it? I mean, if something happens to you sometimes, or if it happens often?
But don’t make no nevermind for this survey… And… why are students who often fear speaking onaccounta someone might disagree with them in college? Isn’t polemical discussion the basis of the seminar? Did these schools go out of their way to admit people who said in their application essays I often sit silently, full of fear that others may disagree with what I say?
Fear not. Do not fear disagreeing with bogus science that comes to us complete with grandmothers warning about the big bad wolf.
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Update: PhilosopherP, a reader, mentions in her comment something about the survey that Mr UD also noted. UD forgot to put it in the original post:
Don’t forget lumping together “have experienced” and “observed” and “knows someone who experienced” — so, one incident of public/ gossiped about unwanted kissing could generate a large number of responses.
UD thanks PhilosopherP.
August 12th, 2009 at 9:22AM
Don’t forget lumping together "have experienced" and "observed" and "knows someone who experienced" — so, one incident of public/ gossiped about unwanted kissing could generate a large number of responses.
I have to wonder that the organization realized that they’ve done their job a bit too well and thus felt the need to generate some panic in order to justify their continued existence.
August 12th, 2009 at 9:25AM
Mr. UD is right, it is easy to write a manipulative survey.
In fact our university sends these out all the time. With the imprimatur of some outfit called "Survey Monkey." I kid not.
The other one that is a little disturbing is the whining on the U of M Daily web comments section. This stuff about being intimidated because others might disagree with you.
I thought the purpose of a university was to have disagreements and to sort them out? To be able to defend your arguments. Considering all the bragging about high standards of admission, hearing complaints about having to engage in the give-and-take of the exchange of ideas is a little sad.
But I rant.
Bill
August 12th, 2009 at 9:46AM
The Barnard results are interesting — seems that things don’t improve all that much if you remove the male students.
August 12th, 2009 at 9:52AM
Absolutely, PhilosopherP. This is also one of the points Mr UD made. I forgot to include it. Thank you.
August 12th, 2009 at 11:23AM
The point of research like this is to garner enough attention to get more money for research like this. Once the criterion is clear, I’ll bet this is a pretty successful survey. I know that because I asked a neighbor, two passers-by and the bagger at IGA, and 75% of the sample said they loved it, but were neither alarmed nor disturbed as far as I could tell.
August 12th, 2009 at 12:31PM
Similarly, surveys are regularly rolled out telling us about college students’ Shocking and Alarming Ignorance of history and constitutional law(only 53 per cent got the answers right!) while never explaining what an Unshocking and Unalarming figure would look like.
August 12th, 2009 at 1:32PM
I was going to comment with some version of what PhilosopherP and Mr. UD said, but with an additional caveat: to be really useful, you’d need to know the number of incidents and maybe ask a follow-up question as to whether or not the students felt that something like that would happen to them. I’m not a social scientist so I wouldn’t know how to word this sort of thing, but some kind of question that tries to figure out whether there have been few, widely reported but also maybe widely disapproved of incidents, or many incidents to an extent that it’s become an expected part of the campus culture.
August 15th, 2009 at 4:11AM
This is cool and informative . If am able to produce a post of this kind will use your points …cheers
August 19th, 2009 at 1:01AM
I would also note the highly speculative question: "For each group below, please indicate what kind of effect you think a student’s group identity would have on their chances of being elected student body president – help, hurt, or have no effect?" That asks for a very subjective answer that the student likely cannot draw on actual experience to judge.