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The gender gap in reporting household gun ownership
J Ludwig1, P J Cook, T W Smith
1Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20007, USA. ludwigj@gunet.georgetown.edu
Objectives:
This study examined errors in estimating household gun ownership that result from interviewing only 1 adult per household.
Methods:
Data from 2 recent telephone surveys and a series of in-person surveys were used to compare reports of household gun ownership by husbands and wives.
Results:
In the telephone surveys, the rate of household gun ownership reported by husbands exceeded wives' reports by an average of 12 percentage points; husbands' reports also implied 43.3 million more guns. The median "gender gap" in recent in-person surveys is 7 percentage points.
Conclusions:
Future research should focus on respondents' reports about personally owned guns.