I disagree they are not better attempts these studies for the most part have been carried out for political reasons to get political numbers. They are looking to find as many victims as they can count they are not looking to get true numbers. This is a huge problem in the extremely high politicized field of sex crime research. These problems of over counting infest the whole field from child sexual abuse numbers where more than one study counted as sexual abuse kids that did not want their aunt to kiss them on the cheek to sex trafficking numbers which counts all the kids in San Diego and Niegra Falls at being at risk.
I have no doubt that the number is underreported but than ever crime is underreported. But for the numbers suggested from the research in sex crime to be true you are talking about an underrporting rate of only 1 in 800 to 1 in 8000 depending on the number you look at. Even secondary indicators you can try to glem data from come no where close to suggesting a problem anywhere close to these numbers suggest like females dropping out of college or having sudden attendence and grade problems. Also, its funny that these studies always get around the same number despite a drop in every violent crime over the last 3 decades and a drop in rape in particlur despite rape being taken more seriously than ever to the point even RAIIN no longer claims that fear of not being believed is a primary reason for not reporting the crime.
I'm glad that you piped in here. I don't believe @TraneWreck's "facts" either. There are a number of things to consider.
It's only been about three decades since we've taken rape of women seriously, and we've only started. Women who try to report rapes face brutal treatment. I know this, because I was the lover and later the husband of an ER nurse who got training on how to do a "rape kit" back in the middle 1990s, did one, and refused to do it ever again. She said that it was a second rape. (I can get graphic if you like.) I also know because just a couple of years ago a female friend of mine got raped, and I did what support I could for her.
It's still totally abysmal for female victims, and this is reprehensible. However, it is even worse for male victims, who will be laughed at. I know this for many reasons, including my own sexual battery and how there was no support: what little there was was exclusively for women. I also know from some male friends, who only opened up to me after I made comments on public fora.
So almost never will a male victim of rape confide in anybody.
Also, the majority of states do not have laws criminalizing rape of men. Some had sodomy laws, and forcible sodomy was one of the categories. However, the Supreme Court made an opinion in Lawrence
v. Texas that struck down all the sodomy laws. A very good opinion in my opinion, by the way, but it has left the state of male victims in limbo.
I am very proud that my home state of Florida replaced all its rape statutes with a non-sexist sexual battery law in 1973. It's good, though it has an interesting flaw in that all sexual intercourse is defined as "sexual battery," but not always the kind that is criminal. Whenever you see a study that talks about the legal definition of rape or sexual battery, check the laws out to see if there is probable cause to think some prevarication is going on.
Still, Florida was and is highly unusual. The overwhelming majority of instances of penes shoved into the vaginas of unwilling women are viewed as rape (except for Illiniois, which has funny laws). The overwhelming majority of instances of penes shoved into the anuses of unwilling men are considered not to be rape.