How do we know that rape is under-reported, you know, If it’s not reported. Does that mean under-reported to police, or under-reported altogether.
I’ve never understood how we can say things like 70 percent of rapes (or whatever!) are not reported…if they aren’t reported!
Am I missing a metric here?
There are a variety of statistical techniques we can use to determine inconsistent relationships in data sets to point out issues. One of the best is to look for significant (high-sigma) deltas in data sets. Rape crime statistics are frequently several sigmas lower than comparable stats like self-reported incidence of sex crime in population surveys and calls to crisis centers.
While there are confidence interval issues and quality of data issues to be concerned with, it’s pretty definitively true that rape is “under-reported”. To your question, though, the under-report “rate” is a construct of mathematical assumptions that are by no means mutually agreed upon. Under-report rates are partially influenced by opinions about the relative reliability of self-reported stats vs. “hard” stats like official crime rates.
