"I thought it was just a part of life." VAWG survey report published today

[334bu]

mobile.twitter.com/DrJessTaylor/status/1388042155319517185

Shocking results. Surpring? Unfortunately not!

Surprising.....

Link to the report: https://irp.cdn-website.com/f9ec73a4/files/uploaded/Key-Facts-Document-VAWG-VictimFocus-2021a.pdf

article in Mirror

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/harrowing-sex-crimes-faced-997-24009471

I filled this survey in.

The questions were in some parts quite harrowing looking back on my life

Do NOT read the comments if you're feeling fragile.

It’s true. Some things that happen and you just think that’s life

yes, same littl.

to all women who've been affected by this.

Sometimes it feels like men have been waging a war on women for the whole of history.

Ok arabella. I won’t

I feel exactly the same. Filling it in I realised how young I was and how different things happened regularly through my early adult years.

I hadn't thought about those incidents in years and writing it all down in one place made me think. I genuinely thought of it as part of life, being a girl and then a woman, and that this was just something to put up with.

I also spoke to my mum about it. It started aged 8 for her. It seems 'normal'. How we break the cycle I don't know.

I think this is an excellent and really important piece of work. However, I have concerns around the methodology. As I recall (as someone who completed the survey) they were specifically asking for women who had experienced abuse to complete the survey therefore you would expect 100% of respondents to have experienced it. I am worried that this means that some of the headline stats I have seen are a bit misleading?

I am pleased to release this new study which seeks to collect experiences of UK adult women subjected to any form of violence and abuse since birth.

twitter.com/DrJessTaylor/status/1329160860661637120?s=19

The study gives us valuable information about the types and prevalence of abuse, I don't think it can be extrapolated to give prevalence within the population. Eg the 50% of women raped in sleep is actually 50% of women who have experienced abuse have been raped in their sleep.

I'm really not an MRA and I'm not trying to discredit the work, I'm just concerned it's bad science and might backfire.

I find itquite overwhelming tothink about stuff that's happened to me chronologically. My first memory of being sexually assaulted was being held down by at 7 by a group of male classmates so they could undress me - I can't remember what happened after that. And then it's just "then this assault happened, then this one, then this one..." I'm 45 now and the most recent event happens 4 years ago when a man crotch rubbed me at a work conference.

I'm so glad this has been published to show I'm not unusual because sometimes I feel like I must have done something to deserve this

itsall the survey was open to any women. I agree respondents might self-select on the basis they had been abused but I think the scale and type of violence the 22,000 respondents experienced is telling us something.
You can't just write that kind of sample off as biased.

You can't just write that kind of sample off as biased.

You can if it was specifically recruiting women who feel that they were abused

Don't get me wrong, it's a massive sample size of women who feel they have been abused and there is lots and lots of really important information to be gained. Due to the way the survey was "advertised" though I don't think you can say it's a sample of the general female population. Which is a real shame as I suspect there is a significant overlap.

I think the survey shows clearly that lots of awful behaviour is normalised. However (sorry) I also have issues with the methodology on this one, both in the self selecting respondent group, and in some of the activities classed as sexual violence. I don't think its helpful to consider catcalling, or unwanted nudes, for example, as violence. There's very real, very harmful violence against women and girls, and catcalling is part of the culture which allows it, to be sure, but not comparable in itself to then be grouped up as '99.57% of women experience violence including rape'.

Read the report
Out of the 22,000 women
Before age 18, 80% were sexually touched without consent by someone and 44% were subjected to this at least 3 times
After age 18, 87% have been sexually touched by someone without consent and 77% have been subjected to this more than 3 times

Her findings correlate with the recent YouGov poll showing 97% ofwomen have been harassed
This is a huge problem and nit picking studies benefits noone.

Every time I've been catcalled I've been left wondering if he will escalate or not.

This is a huge problem and nit picking studies benefits noone.

The problem is that if you don't address the potential weaknesses in a study others will, and will use them to discredit the entire study, even when the stats, used correctly, are valid.

The report methodology skims over the recruitment method and does not address this flaw.

On twitter Jessica Taylor has now thankfully clarified that "we aren’t seeking to generalise or extrapolate to the UK population from our study". However she is retweeting commentators who clearly are extrapolating that, and it is clear many in the media are too.

It's fantastic that people are suddenly waking up to the fact that VAWG is endemic. My concern is that when the methodology of the recruitment for this survey is examined more closely in the media, it will be seen as flawed and will discredit the whole report, and be used to say that reports of VAWG are inflated.

@ItsAllGoingToBeFine

Don't get me wrong, it's a massive sample size of women who feel they have been abused and there is lots and lots of really important information to be gained. Due to the way the survey was "advertised" though I don't think you can say it's a sample of the general female population. Which is a real shame as I suspect there is a significant overlap.

I wonder if it's a reporting thing? Haven't had a chance to look at what's been put it yet, but if they are saying "X percentage of women who've suffered abuse" and the press is then running with "X percentage of all women" then that's the flaw with the press.

I would like to see a survey that's not self selecting that backs up the high figures, which I imagine it would probably do to some degree.

@QuentinBunbury

Read the report Out of the 22,000 women Before age 18, 80% were sexually touched without consent by someone and 44% were subjected to this at least 3 times After age 18, 87% have been sexually touched by someone without consent and 77% have been subjected to this more than 3 times

Her findings correlate with the recent YouGov poll showing 97% ofwomen have been harassed
This is a huge problem and nit picking studies benefits noone.

I think we should always be critically looking at things, rather than just supporting it because it supports our viewpoint. Bad data doesn't help identify or tackle the issue, and from looking both at the survey (I completed it at the time) amd the results, I struggle to see how this is going to generate usable data.

i.e. sexual touching. What does that mean? Is it a bum grope in a pub, or is it holding someone down and assaulting them. Both are bad, but there's a clear separation between the two and how you'd tackle them.

@allItsAllGoingToBeFine I agree that the way it is being reported could ultimately be detrimental - I produce statistics as part of my job, including things that certain government departments are desperate to discredit, and I spend quite a lot of time defending our methodology. Like you, I am really concerned that the issues with overstating what the study is showing re: generalising to the population will overshadow the really important and powerful findings

I would like to see a survey that's not self selecting that backs up the high figures, which I imagine it would probably do to some degree

Absolutely but how could you possibly do that? Given that many of the offences occurred when the victims were minors ,should we be surveying all girls at school but how could you possibly do that without causing trauma to those suffering such abuse?

Personally I feel that it wouldn't matter how big this survey was or how randomly surveyed , the result would not be very different and cynic that I am ,the same whataboutery would probably be put forward to dismiss its findings.

I have just realised that some of these questions are addressed on the victim focus website www.victimfocus.org.uk/womens_experiences_violence_abuse_study

Is this sample representative of the female UK population?

This question is common but is irrelevant, as we did not seek to generalise to the entire population from this study. The findings are relevant to this cohort of 22,419 women – and some people may make inferences from this data, but we do not seek to do so.

However, we did explore the demographics of our sample in detail and found that it was more diverse than the UK population in terms of ethnicity and religion.

Women aged 18-78 took part, but the majority of women were under 60 years old, which means it is not representative of women over 60 – and this is regrettable as this group of women are often ignored or misrepresented in research.

Our sample was also slightly overrepresented in terms of education levels and wealth.

Is there a respondent bias? Wouldn’t women who were already subjected to violence be more likely to respond?

This comment has been common since our study was announced.

This criticism is valid for pretty much every study that does not use an RCT design or random sampling technique.

All studies which call for participants of any kind will be subject to some form of limitation based on interest.

However, this doesn’t seem to have been the case, especially as the sample is so diverse and many women took part away from our social media. It is more likely that the statistics are high in this sample, because they are valid responses to the accessible items.