General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How to Lie with Rape Statistics: America's Hidden Rape Crisis [View all]qazplm
(3,626 posts)even with wrong numbers you are not completely unable to identify trends.
One would assume that if they've been doing this for 40 years, at worst, they are asking the same "bad" questions, and more likely, the questions of today are better than the questions of 40 years ago.
They see a decline. Now, if you want to argue that the numbers are higher, feel free. There isn't exactly a good number for sexual assaults other than 0, and it's certainly possible every instance doesn't make either of these surveys/calculations. But it's unlikely that the NCVS is SO wrong, that the numbers/trends are completely meaningless. It is also very unlikely statistically, that the trends between the reported and NCVS would match closely if the numbers for both were completely meaningless.