Campus Climate Surveys: Their Usefulness in Generating Estimates and Assessing Program Effectiveness

• In Event: Policy Panel: The Future of Preventing College Sexual Assault

Abstract

Generating estimates of the incidence of interpersonal violence and measuring perceptions of campus climate and reactions from students’ responses to campus climate survey has become a “new” reality for college and university administrators. Such estimates have been one of my research interests for almost three decades.

Influenced by the continued efforts of researchers, victim advocates, service providers, and the Obama’s Administration’s Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault, the findings from campus climate surveys are being used by campus administrators to inform their prevention efforts and responses to the report of sexual assault, stalking, dating/intimate partner violence and harassment among their students. These survey also can be used to evaluate the school’s efforts, including to assess the effectiveness of the SaVE Act’s mandated bystander intervention training to reducing interpersonal victimization and perpetration, and to document the use and helpfulness of, as well as the barriers, to victims’ services.

Campus administrators and officials should give priority and sufficient continuous funding to the development and administration of campus climate surveys that are tailored to their school; they also should use the findings as recruitment and retention tools.

Author

• Bonnie Sue Fisher, University of Cincinnati