Caltech Releases Results of AAU 2019 Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct
In Spring 2019, Caltech, along with 32 other colleges and universities, participated in the Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct organized by the Association of American Universities (AAU), which queried concerns related to the incidence and prevalence of sexual assault and sexual misconduct on college campuses. The survey also assessed the overall climate of each campus with respect to perceptions of risk, knowledge of resources available to victims, and perceived reactions to an incident of sexual assault or sexual misconduct. The information gathered will help to inform policies and outreach efforts created by member universities to both prevent and respond to sexual assault and sexual misconduct.
The 2019 survey was a follow-up to the 2015 Campus Climate Survey and is part a broader commitment by Caltech and its peers to understand these issues and improve the campus climate.
"Repeated participation in the AAU Campus Climate Survey permits us to benchmark Caltech's activities to our peers and our past," says Thomas F. Rosenbaum, Caltech president, Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair, and professor of physics. "While most of our students are confident that their complaints about sexual harassment and sexual assault will be taken seriously and fairly addressed, we need to continue to improve our efforts in education and intervention so that all the members of our community find campus a safe and supportive environment in which to live and work."
Since the 2015 survey, Caltech has invested in and expanded the scope of its Title IX office, engaging a four-person team to address a broad base of equity issues; Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs or activities. The office now focuses on all forms of unlawful harassment, sexual misconduct, and discrimination. Among other activities, it works with students, staff, faculty, and other campus groups to bolster and expand inclusion efforts; educates the Caltech community about preventing and addressing discrimination, unlawful harassment, and sexual misconduct; and helps students communicate with each other about relevant issues including boundaries associated with drinking and sexual activity.
For the 2019 survey, Caltech conducted a census of its 2,171 students (930 undergraduates). To encourage participation, the undergraduate house with the highest percentage completion rate was offered a $1,000 fund toward the purchase of house equipment, and the division with the highest completion rate by graduate students was offered a graduate student division party. As with the 2015 survey, the statistical survey research firm Westat administered the web-based questionnaire, compiled the data, and provided individual and aggregate results.
In the end, 877 students (501 undergraduate and 376 graduate students) completed the survey, for a Caltech response rate of 40 percent. The undergraduate response rate was 54 percent and the graduate student response rate was 30 percent. Women's response rate was 51 percent compared to 34 percent for men.
For comparison, a total of 830,956 students were invited to participate in the AAU survey. The overall AAU results include 181,752 completed surveys for an AAU response rate of 22 percent.
At Caltech, the goals of the survey were to: 1) assess the prevalence of sexual assault and other misconduct; 2) describe the circumstances, student responses, and consequences associated with instances of sexual assault and other misconduct; 3) assess student perceptions surrounding sexual assault and other misconduct; 4) assess student knowledge of school resources and procedures when responding to instances of sexual assault and other misconduct; 5) assess how bystanders react in different situations related to sexual assault and other misconduct; 6) describe changes in the prevalence of nonconsensual sexual contact and in students' perceptions and knowledge of school policies and procedures since the 2015 survey.
"The Equity Office and Title IX team is deeply grateful to all of the students who participated in the survey," says Hima Vatti, assistant vice president of equity, equity investigations, and Title IX coordinator. "These data are crucial in illuminating sexual misconduct issues on campus; opportunities for increasing student awareness of and confidence in policies, procedures, and intervention techniques; and topics and audiences for outreach efforts."
The following summary draws from both the Caltech report and the AAU aggregate report, highlights key findings, and compares Caltech results to the aggregate AAU findings.
Campus climate around sexual assault and sexual misconduct
Overall, Caltech students reported a campus climate supportive of individuals who report sexual assault or sexual misconduct.
Compared with the 2015 survey, the 2019 survey revealed an increased awareness about sexual assault, sexual misconduct, and how those actions are defined, both at Caltech and in the AAU aggregate data. The 2019 survey also showed, relatedly, an increase in student awareness of, and concerns about, potentially problematic acts, both at Caltech and across the schools participating in the AAU survey. These trends reveal an opportunity to leverage student awareness to encourage greater reporting of problematic behavior and intervention by students to stop it in their academic and personal environments. The potential for increased reporting is further bolstered by student confidence in their institutions to take reports seriously.
Specifically:
Caltech students also reported perceptions of a safe campus environment:
Frequency and nature of sexual assault and sexual misconduct
The forms of sexual misconduct surveyed included both the type of sexual contact (penetration or sexual touching) and whether it involved physical force or coercion, incapacitation (alcohol or drugs), or occurred absent affirmative consent.
Overall, members of the Caltech community were less likely than those in the AAU aggregate survey community to report an incident of nonconsensual sexual contact using any tactic (physical force, the inability to give consent, or without ongoing voluntary agreement).
Across enrollment types and gender, Caltech community members reported statistically equivalent rates of nonconsensual sexual contact since enrolling compared with the 2015 survey, whereas there was a statistically significant increase in the AAU survey aggregate.
There continues to be a gender disparity in the prevalence with which these acts are experienced, with undergraduate and graduate women being more than four times as likely as their male counterparts to experience such situations (17 percent versus 4 percent). There are also significant differences in the rates at which these acts are experienced by heterosexual students and students who identify, as defined by the survey, as "gay, lesbian, other, or multiple categories" (7 percent versus 18 percent), and between individuals who do and do not report having a disability (21 percent versus 5 percent).
Specifically:
Frequency and nature of sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, and stalking
The survey considered three other forms of sexual misconduct: harassing behavior, intimate partner violence, and stalking behavior.
Sexual Harassment
Intimate Partner Violence
Stalking Behaviors
What students know and think about campus resources
Questions gauging student awareness of Caltech services and resources offered to victims of sexual assault and sexual misconduct were also posed. Ninety percent of students who first enrolled at Caltech in Fall 2018 reported that they completed training modules or information sessions about sexual assault or other sexual misconduct as first year students, as compared to 81 percent of first year students in the AAU aggregate data.
Data indicate that Caltech undergraduate students are generally more knowledgeable than graduate students about the Institute's sexual assault policies and procedures, where to seek help and make a report about sexual assault or sexual misconduct, and what happens after a report is made.
An increased number of both female graduate students and male graduate students indicated being very or extremely knowledgeable in the areas of policies and definitions concerning sexual misconduct, as well as resources for assistance, as compared to the 2015 survey. In addition, in the 2019 survey, undergraduate male, graduate male and female, and TGQN students showed significantly greater awareness of the process for incident reporting and what happens after a report is made.
Bystander reactions in situations related to sexual assault and other misconduct
A new category of questions in the 2019 survey concerned bystanders who noticed inappropriate acts or comments directed at others and the possible sexual harassment or sexual abuse of another student, and the subsequent actions of those bystanders.
Overall, students at Caltech were slightly more likely to witness behaviors that made them concerned that a fellow student was experiencing sexual harassment or that someone was behaving in a controlling or abusive way than were students participating in the AAU survey (9 percent versus 7 percent).
One-fourth of Caltech students reported they had witnessed someone at Caltech making inappropriate sexual comments about someone else's appearance, sharing unwanted sexual images, or otherwise acting in a sexual way that seemed to make others feel uncomfortable or offended; a nearly identical rate (26 percent) was noted in the AAU survey. TGQN students (64 percent) and undergraduate females (33 percent) were most likely to witness these incidents. Seventy-two percent of Caltech students who witnessed such incidents took some action and 42 percent took direct action.
Caltech students were less likely to report observing intimate partner violence (10 percent versus 13 percent); these reports were again more common among undergraduate women (18 percent) and TGQN students (37 percent).
The full results of the Caltech Campus Climate survey are available at https://www.iro.caltech.edu/aau2019.
The full AAU report as well as an executive summary, a description of the survey methodology, and other information is available at the AAU Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct (2019) website.