We just had a local English teacher arrested for having a sexual affair with one of her students. Apparently the affair had been going on for over a year and was only discovered because the husband of the teacher found out and reported it. This led to a discussion of the risk level of such behavior and we wondered the percentage of these affairs that go forever unreported vs the ones that get caught. Unlike most things that you think you can give a neighborhood estimate of, i wouldnt even begin to know what % of these affairs get discovered by authorities. How could you determine this number? I dont think you can survey 100 teachers and ask how many of them have banged students and not got caught? What do you think, guess, know of the % of these relationships that get exposed?
The way to survey this type of thing is you ask the subject to flip a coin secretly and answer “yes” if it comes up heads, and tell the truth if it comes up tails.
Impossible to say, but the numbers do appear to be up. An interesting article suggesting the rise of social media is partly to blame: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/20/more-teachers-are-having-sex-with-their-students-heres-how-schools-can-stop-them/?utm_term=.4b85c383c6aa
ETA or any other randomized-response technique, e.g., throw a die and answer the yes/no question “I am bad” on a roll of 1, otherwise respond to “I am good”.
Its one of those rare situations that if you told me 5% of the relationships were uncovered, i would believe you and if you told me 95% of the relationships were caught id also believe you.
Based only on the relationships I was aware of in high school that never became public, I’d guess the disclosure rate is pretty low.
I’ve known three women who claimed they had relationships with their teachers in high school (different schools), a principal who had multiple relationships with students (he was caught) and a female teacher who was rumored to be having a relationship with at least one student.
Two of the women later married their teachers. I don’t know whether that counts as being “caught.”
All this happened long before social media. I have no idea how widespread it may have been, but I don’t think my circle of acquaintances is particularly kinky.
I know two teachers who have relationship with their students. It is likely that percentage is increasing in the society.
I’ve seen this survey strategy before, and I’m a bit skeptical of it. It depends upon all the respondents understanding the logic of this strategy, and I’m more than a little dubious about that.
In my view, more often than they should be. The sexuality of people is their own business, and the “age of consent” is a highly arbitrary tribal custom.
Unless there reason to suspect unreasonable coercion, leave them alone.
In this country, the age of consent is sixteen, but it is illegal for an adult who has authority - like a teacher - to have a sexual relationship with a young student. There are no hard and fast rules though, but a thirty-year-old teacher banging a seventeen-year-old pupil would result in loss of job at the very least, while a forty-year-old lecturer banging a nineteen-year-old student would be unethical but not illegal.
Once past the age of eighteen, they are adults and deemed capable of making their own decisions, but, as we have seen from recent events, its best to keep one’s hands to one’s self when it comes to juniors of either sex.
+1
But my information is from the 90’s. My guess would be that the level of disclosure would be higher now.
Agreed. My knowledge is from the 70s.
In my state, the 30 year old teacher, assuming we’re talking about secondary education, could go to prison and be put on the most draconian tier of the sex offender registry for life, even if the student was 18.
I studied this type of survey back in grad school. Mathematically, it works perfectly: you can easily determine the actual response rate without every identifying the actual respondents who truthfully answered the question.
Mathematically, it is beautiful. However, as social science, it stinks. Convincing survey subjects that the survey is secure and will protect their privacy is all but impossible, even if they have the background to understand the mathematics.