Throughout her book [...], Russell initiates the claim that her study is the most valid, indeed, perhaps the only truly valid and informative study on the subject of intrafamilial sexual behaviors, which she terms "incest" or "incestuous abuse" (p. 137). [...] She sees her study as the "first opportunity to evaluate some of the contemporary controversies surrounding incest on the basis of a scientifically selected non-clinical population" (p. 10) and asserts that "it is the methodology of our survey that sets it apart from all previous studies" (p. 19).
With the exception of Wyatt (1985), which used a research approach similar to that of Russell and obtained similar results, Russell's reported combined prevalence rates for intra- and extrafamilial sexual abuse greatly exceed those of all other studies reviewed. These studies include nine investigations, reviewed by Peters, Wyatt, and Finkelhor (1986), that used various types of random sampling procedures. Among these nine was the investigation by Lewis (1985), the first, and thus far the only, study of sexual abuse to use a random national sample. To bring the extend of variance between Russell's or Wyatt's work and virtually all other major studies into sharper relief, it should be noted that Russell's and Wyatt's prevalence figures are a full 32-35 percentage points above Lewis's - which are in turn considerably higher than those reported in eight out of the nine studies reviewed by Peters, Wyatt and Finkelhor, as well as several other reviewed by Russell herself and by this author.
Russell devotes quite a bit of space attempting to unearth the deficiencies in all these studies that might account for the disparity between their results and her own. The idea that there may have been something amiss in her research is not considered. However, problems in her methodology are immediately apparent.
Along with her sampling techniques, Russell's claims to the superiority of her study rest primarily on what she terms the "training" and "sensitization" of her interviewers to the subject of incest and sexual abuse. It is the lack of this "sensitization" that she claims is responsible for the supposed inaccuracy of all previous studies. Referring, for instance, to a previous study whose 1% prevalence rate for intrafamilial sexual abuse differed sharply from her 19% figure, Russell comments, "Since [the intertviewers were] not educated in this fashion, they can therefore be assumed to subscribe to common myths about women who are sexually abused" (p.25).
According to Russell, her training regimen gave interviewers a "better sense of what questions encourage disclosure" and "what types of resistance to expect" (p.20). Interviewers were specificaly choosen for their "non-victim-blaming attitudes," thus weeding out what she terms the "bigotry" of those who might not view all of the younger interactants in adult/nonadult sex as victims (p.21). Indeed, she repeats that she used "careful selection of interviewers who did not subscribe to the usual myths about sexual abuse." If one recalls that among these "myths" Russell counts the idea that a child might willingly engage in a sexual interaction with an older individual and later self-report that this interaction was benign - a "myth" that has been established as factual by empirical, cross-cultural, and anecdotal data - it is clear that interviewers were "carefully selected" to include only those who were unwilling to acknowledge the existence of these data.
It may reasonably be concluded from all of the foregoing that Russell equates "training" and "sensitization" with passionate ideological indoctrination of interviewers who have been preselected for their receptivity to the indoctrination. These interviewers are then charged with the duty to collect only certain kinds of data. Such mandated selective disregard of undesirable facts becomes obvious when one looks carefully at several of Russell's interviewing techniques. For example, she declares:
"The widely held notion of the child taking the initiative in sexual liasons with adults is a classic case of the victim blaming so common in sexual abuse mythology. How can children initiate acts of which they have little or no understanding? To avoid propagating this myth we did not specifically ask who took the initiative."
Since it has never been demonstrated that all individuals under age 18 or 16 or even 14 have "little or no understanding" of sexual acts, or that even if they did not, that they would therefore be unable to "initiate" these acts through proceptive expressive behavior, Russell's statement - rather than reflecting a desire to avoid propagating a myth - probalby reflects a general disinclination to collect data that might contradict a political or moral position.
In a similar effort to guide response in an approved direction, Russell asked the following to elicit data on the important question of subject affect during and following the sexual interaction:
"Overall, how upset were you by this experience - extremely upset, somewhat upset, or not very upset?" (p. 138).
Set off from these choises by parentheses on the intreviewer's sheet was the designation "(not at all upset)." Russell explains that it was left up to the "interviewer's discretion" whether to include this parentheetical choise in her interview schedule. The alternatives offered to respondents, then, ran the gamut of the negative, and the one comparatively neutral response (still utilizing the negatively loaded word "upset," however) was in an unspecified number of cases not even presented. Russell defends this practice with the following:
"The reason this final choise was put in parentheses [and only presented at the interviewer's discretion] is to prevent the respondent from experiencing this part of the question as insulting or insensitive" (p.138).
Russell considers it an "insult" to allow for the possibility that a respondent may not have been upset by her experience, and the possibility of overtly positive affect is structurally disallowed. One possible subject response to this kind of interviewer bias is described by Germaine Greer (1975) when she relates the experience of one of her school friends:
"[She] enjoyed sex with her uncle throughout her childhood and never realized that anything was unusual until she went away to school. What disturbed her then was not what her uncle had done, but the attitude of her teachers and psychiatrist. They assumed that she must have been traumatized and disgusted and therefore in need of very special help. In order to capitulate to their expectations, she began to fake symptoms she did not feel, until a length she began to feel truly guilty for not having felt guilty. She ended up judging herself quite harshly for this innate lechery.