Lauren's Kids releases dubious study basing claim of widespread campus sexual abuse among athletes

A recent claim that one in 4 college athletes are sexually abused by authority figures conjured up by Lauren's Kids made its rounds among the mass media around the end of August, primarily USA Today. As I've stated on other blogs, we have to watch out for dubious studies. The link to the study (not prominently displayed) can be found at:

https://laurenskids.org/college-athletes-report-high-incidence-of-sexual-abuse-by-campus-authority-figures-survey-finds/

PDF here -- https://laurenskids.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/21-CRU-001-Campus-Sex-Abuse-Report-V2_5.pdf

Interestingly, Lauren's Kids did not provide detailed results, including methodology and breakdown of actual numbers for download. All we get is the summary of their findings. 

As with any dubious survey, there are a few problems the media did not consider at all: 

1. The study was not only commissioned by Lauren's Kids, an already questionable charity, it was also conducted by Ben Crump and Richard Schulte, two attorneys looking to rake in millions of dollars over sexual abuse claims on the campuses of Ohio State and Michigan. 

2. The survey was of around 1500 "college educated people", with about half "under the age of 45." While older Americans occasionally go to college, it is far more likely many older survey takers went to college long ago in a different era. Why did they go this route rather than go to a college and survey current students? Where was the surveys conducted? Did they limit themselves to just colleges where a current scandal occurs? It is unclear since they never bother to mention methodology. I would not be surprised if it was a survey directly of people in direct contract with victim advocate groups, which would skewer the results.  

3. The survey jumps from saying based on a survey of 1500 'college educated people' they jump into the claims that "one in four student-athletes "endured inappropriate sexual contract". Nowhere in the survey does it state the number of those surveyed who were student athletes.

Without knowing the answers to the latter two questions, and knowing the source of these clais, this report should be taken with a grain of salt. This appears to be just another PR stunt by Senator Book.