A new survey of young Americans by Harvard's Institute of Politics casts doubt on the widely repeated statistic that one in five women in college is a victim of sexual assault. The one-in-five figure comes from a survey conducted in 2007 for the Justice Department at two large public universities, one in the Midwest and the other in the South. The researchers who conducted the study, who did not name the two schools, cautioned that their findings might not be applicable nationwide, but the figure has, nonetheless, been featured in presidential speeches, social-media campaigns, and numerous articles. The new survey, part of a series that the Institute of Politics has done on the attitudes and experiences of young Americans, reports that 11 percent of female respondents ages 18 to 29 said they had been the victim of a sexual assault.

April 30, 2015 ・ From Tribune Washington Bureau