Researchers commonly assumed that disparities in the statistical trends reflect changes in the willingness of rape victims to report such offenses to the police. The increase in the proportion of victims who report to the police, as reflected in both the victim surveys of NCS and the police reports of UCR, can be attributed to the acceptance of liberated sex role attitudes. Decreases in the rape victimization rate and the fear of rape, as reflected in NCS data, are thought to provide a truer approximation of the incidence of rape. However, UCR statistics would indicate improvement in the management of rape cases. The authors propose that explanations that emphasize such improvement could better account for the downward movement of NCS rates than could the common explanations based on victim willingness to report. 3 tables, 6 figures, 14 footnotes, and 28 references