The gender gap in reporting household gun ownership.

This study examined errors in estimating household gun ownership that result from interviewing only 1 adult per household.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.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.Future research should focus on respondents' reports about personally owned guns.

Duke Scholars

Author Philip J. Cook Sanford School of Public Policy