Student activists rally against sexual violence at Pace U. in 2018. A new survey from the Association of American Universities found that more undergraduates reported knowing the definition of sexual assault and where to get help, compared with a 2015 survey.Drew Angerer, Getty Images
More than one in four undergraduate women experience a form of nonconsensual sexual contact while enrolled in college, and most of them don’t report it or seek out campus resources, according to a new survey of 180,000 students conducted by the Association of American Universities.
But compared with 2015 — the last time the association did such a survey — a larger share of undergraduate students knew the definition of sexual assault, where to get help, and how to report it.
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Student activists rally against sexual violence at Pace U. in 2018. A new survey from the Association of American Universities found that more undergraduates reported knowing the definition of sexual assault and where to get help, compared with a 2015 survey.Drew Angerer, Getty Images
More than one in four undergraduate women experience a form of nonconsensual sexual contact while enrolled in college, and most of them don’t report it or seek out campus resources, according to a new survey of 180,000 students conducted by the Association of American Universities.
But compared with 2015 — the last time the association did such a survey — a larger share of undergraduate students knew the definition of sexual assault, where to get help, and how to report it.
“It could be what we’re seeing is, we’re informing our students of what it is, they see it, and they recognize it and say, This happened to me,” said Kimberlee Eberle-Sudré, director of policy research at the association.
At the same time, Eberle-Sudré said, “we also are recognizing that some students still won’t say that it happened to them.”
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The results, published on Tuesday, indicate that while colleges continue to struggle to reach victims and to encourage them to come forward, efforts to educate students about sexual assault appear to be paying off, to some extent. The data also reflect the “1 in 4” figure for what share of women experience campus sexual assault that’s often cited and disputed.
The survey included students at 33 public and private colleges, 32 of which are major research universities that are members of the association. Twenty-one of the colleges also participated in the association’s 2015 survey, and those are the figures used for comparison. While these selective institutions don’t represent the entire higher-education sector, the survey is one of the largest ever conducted of students’ experiences with sexual assault and harassment.
What’s more, this year’s survey was done in the #MeToo era. Researchers asked additional questions about students’ experiences of harassment and how it had affected them professionally.
Among all students, both undergraduate and graduate, the rate of nonconsensual sexual contact was 13 percent, up slightly from 2015. One-fifth of all women identified themselves as victims. Among undergraduate women, nearly 26 percent reported experiencing sexual misconduct. For transgender, nonbinary, and gender-questioning undergraduates, the figure was 23 percent.
Compared with undergraduates, female graduate students reported a smaller victimization rate: 9.7 percent.
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About half of the incidents that the students reported involved physical force, and half involved an inability to consent due to being passed out, asleep, or incapacitated due to alcohol or drugs. Most students said alcohol had been involved.
The Role of #MeToo
Less than one-third of the women, and even fewer of the men, who experienced nonconsensual penetration said they had taken advantage of a program or resource after the assault. Asked why they had not, students reported feeling as though they could handle the situation themselves, not thinking the incident was serious enough, or feeling embarrassed and ashamed. (For victims of sexual touching, the percentage of students who contacted programs was cut in half.)
Counseling was the most common resource the students used; nearly half of the victims connected with a counseling center. One-fifth said they had contacted their campus Title IX office. One-tenth contacted the campus police or local law enforcement. While 41 percent of students said the resources they had used were “very” or “extremely” useful, a similar share, 35 percent, said the programs had been “not at all” or “a little” useful.
The vast majority of students said they had taken a training course on sexual assault, though only 62 percent said they had been educated specifically to prevent sexual misconduct.
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Two-thirds of the students said they had felt “very” or “extremely” confident that university officials would take a report of sexual misconduct seriously.
Two-thirds of the students said they had felt “very” or “extremely” confident that university officials would take a report of sexual misconduct seriously. But just 53 percent of undergraduate women and less than half of gender-nonconforming students felt that way. Less than 30 percent of students who identified themselves as victims felt that administrators would conduct a fair Title IX investigation — 20 percentage points lower than for students over all.
Eberle-Sudré said colleges could do more to encourage students to report what they’d experienced, even if they didn’t want an investigation or any consequences for the perpetrator. “While you may say you can handle it yourself, your school should know about that,” she said.
One challenge, she added, may be that students don’t understand what the reporting process entails. It could be that you just need a letter from the campus health center telling your professors that you can’t make it to class, she said. But students may not know that’s an option for them.
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The survey asked separately about harassment. About 42 percent of students said they had experienced a harassing behavior, like hearing insulting or offensive remarks, or hearing inappropriate comments about someone’s appearance or sexual activities. And 19 percent said they had felt the harassment hurt their performance academically or professionally.
The #MeToo movement has exposed many professors who have sexually harassed graduate students in particular. In the survey, one-fifth of graduate students said they’d been harassed, and one-fourth of those victims said the harasser had been a faculty member.
The response rate for the survey was about 22 percent, of some 830,000 students over all whose views were solicited. Researchers wrote in a report on the survey that nonresponse bias may have led victims to be overrepresented in the results, but they added that there’s little evidence that such bias explains the high sexual-victimization rates.
Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.