Sound data needed to curb sexual assaults

Article here. Excerpt:

'A recent report about sexual assault on the Ohio State University campus shows that an alarming number of OSU students have been sexually assaulted. The university community should act quickly to develop policies to end sexual violence on campus.

But determining those policies can be difficult without accurate information, and there is reason to believe that the survey significantly overestimated the level of campus sexual violence, an issue of concern to me and a number of OSU faculty colleagues (http://bit.ly/1L8SB6H).

A recent letter to the editor in the Ohio State student newspaper, The Lantern, stated that the survey found that “by their senior year, more than one in four OSU women undergraduates experienced at least one sexual assault.” But as the OSU press release announcing the report noted, the survey likely overestimates the true victimization rate.
...
We must move forward with the important work of ending sexual assault at OSU with the recognition that effective solutions to social problems are hindered by inaccurate interpretations of biased data. Sexual violence on Ohio State’s campus is, by any measure, a serious problem, but it probably is not an insurmountable one. It’s on us to undertake this important work in a way that protects the well-being of all of our students and preserves the most fundamental and long-standing strengths of our rich Ohio State community.'