This one has it all apparently. It is official (by the CDC), it is pretty large (about 14,000 questionnaires answered by students in grades 9-12) and covers some interesting topics. So let us start.
Percentage of high school students who were in a physical fight and who were injured in a physical fight
Male 44.4% injured 5.5%
Female 26.5% injured 2.9%
Percentage of high school students who were threatened or injured with
a weapon on school property
Male 10.2%
Female 5.4%
Percentage of high school students who were in a physical fight on school property and who had their property stolen or deliberately damaged on school property.
Male 16.3% stolen/damaged 30.4%
Female 8.5% stolen/damaged 23.7%
No surprise here if you knew the police statistics. Males are more likely to be victims of any crime (except rape). This however is more interesting to me:
Percentage of high school students who did not go to school because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school
Male 5.4%
Female 5.6%
I was a bit surprised as I somehow expected women to be more scared than men. The difference not so much.
Next DV and Rape:
Percentage of high school students who experienced dating violence and who were ever physically forced to have sexual intercourse
Male 11% raped 4.5%
Female 8.8% raped 11.3%
This is interesting and might be surprising to some males are more likely to be victims of dating violence and are about 1/3 of rape victims. Surely, not addressing more than half of all dating violence victims and ignoring 1/3 of all rape victims will not sound like a good idea to those at the CDC, if the US Government would just act accordingly.
If someone remembers the post I made with the meta studies, there is one I held back. It is taken from the book "Weibliche Gewalt in Partnerschaften" (Female violence in relationships) by German Researcher Dr. Schwithal. It is an analyses of 55 worldwide studies on sexual violence with a breakdown on gender. The reason I hold it back was simple. It mashes rape with sexual violence together. Of course one can not compare a full-on rape case with groping, he note however that the amount of male victims of sexual violence was very high. The results, 57.9% of the violence was committed by men. 40.8% of victims were also men.
Interesting in that regard also is the following
Percentage of high school students who ever had sexual intercourse and who had sexual intercourse for the first time and before age 13 years
Male 49.8% before 13 10.9%
Female 45.9% before 13 4%
I wonder how many of those before 13 are statutory rape cases.
We continue with depression:
Percentage of high school students who felt sad or hopeless
Male 21.2%
Female 35.8%
Percentage of high school students who seriously considered attempting suicide and who made a plan about how they would attempt suicide
Male 10.3% planed 9.2%
Female 18.7% planed 13.4%
Percentage of high school students who attempted suicide and whose suicide attempt resulted in an injury, poisoning, or an overdose that had to be treated by a doctor or nurse
Male 4.6% injury 1.5%
Female 9.3% injury 2.4%
And for completions sake from another source youth suicide rates:
In the United States, more than four times as many male youth die by suicide but girls attempt suicide more often and report higher rates of depression (CDC Data). To be honest I expected a larger gap on attempts and planed suicide in favor of women.
And on with drugs, drugs are an interesting topic because people argue that men die younger because they are doing more drugs
Percentage of high school students who ever smoked cigarettes
Male 51.8% daily 13.0%
Female 48.8% daily 11.8%
Percentage of high school students who drank alcohol
Male 74.3% current 44.7% Episodic heavy drinking 27.8%
Female 75.7% current 44.6% Episodic heavy drinking 24.1%
Percentage of high school students who used cocaine
Male 7.8% current 4.0%
Female 6.5% current 2.5%
Percentage of high school students who used heroin
Male 2.9%
Female 1.6%
And again, the gaps here, not so big. Good numbers to keep in mind once this discussion comes up again.
The following goes into the direction of body image:
Percentage of high school students who did not eat for 24 or more hours and who took diet pills, powders, or liquids
Male 7.3% diet pills 4.2%
Female 16.3% diet pills 7.5%
Percentage of high school students who vomited or took laxatives
Male 2.2%
Female 6.4%
Eating disorders / body image is something society sees as a mostly female problem. According to the last set of numbers that would exclude 1/4 of victims. When it comes to body image problems the following is also interesting.
Percentage of high school students who took steroids
Male 5.1%
Female 2.7%
Steroid abuse might be the opposite of eating disorders (excluding binge eating). The pumped up look one can only achieve with drugs. Quite frankly I was surprised with the high female rate (1/3).
In retrospect, a good resource when it comes to DV/rape numbers and some other numbers to keep in the back of your head for certain discussions.
Glad to see you're at it again!
ReplyDelete