The gender gap in reporting household gun ownership.

Abstract

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.

Do Partners With Children Know About Firearms in Their Home? Evidence of a Gender Gap and Implications for Practitioners

“…21,22,26,28,29 This conclusion was drawn from several studies that demonstrated that men and women from theoretically similar households report different prevalence of firearm-ownership and -storage practices. This study contributes to what is known by comparing responses from men and women from the same households.…”

“…More needs to be known about how couples make decisions about whether to have firearms in the home, as well as how to store them. That men are more likely to obtain, personally own, use, carry, and take care of firearms 26 suggests that men's reports are more likely to be accurate than their female partners; however, this may not be the case when women are the sole owners of firearms. Our research and that of others 19 suggests that some men do not disclose to their partners that there are guns in the home.…”

“…As discussed above, women are thought to be less familiar with guns in their home than are men. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27] Therefore, if counseling did in fact bring about a general increase in what respondents knew about the guns in their home, then the result would have been to make a majority of the paired partners in this study more similar in terms of their household firearm knowledge. Ultimately, then, we anticipate that any bias stemming from the use of this sample would be to underestimate the magnitude of the gender gap that we have identified.…”

“…19 Specifically, women have been consistently less likely than men to indicate the presence of a household firearm and have been more likely to report fewer guns per household and safer firearm-storage practices. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27] In 1 study, investigators studied differences in reporting about the presence of guns in homes among men and women by examining 3 large data sets in which respondents for the household were selected randomly. Although respondents theoretically were from the same population, they did not reside together.…”

“…Men were more likely to report the presence of a gun in their homes and were also more likely to report a greater number of guns per household. 26 Also of note was that men were more likely than women to be the personal owners and users of household firearms and more likely to report less safe storage practices. 21,22,26,28,29 This body of literature suggests that women may be unaware of the presence and storage patterns of firearms in their homes or that they provide socially desirable responses about firearms during surveys.…”