About half of all IU students will receive invitations starting Wednesday to complete an anonymous survey about sexual misconduct.
The purpose of the survey, called “Community Attitudes and Experiences with Sexual Assault and Misconduct,” is to understand students’ experiences and feelings about sexual assault, said Emily Springston, IU's Title IX coordinator and director of the Office of Institutional Equity. It also aims to find out students’ awareness of campus resources and educational programming.
The survey will ask about students’ experiences with sexual misconduct before coming to IU and since being at IU, she said. It will ask about beliefs regarding consent and awareness of campus resources, and it will also include a portion asking students how confident they would feel as a bystander to intervene in a situation that could involve sexual misconduct.
Springston said the university hopes to release the gathered data to the public in the fall.
Eight of the nine IU campuses are taking part in the survey. The IU East, Northwest, South Bend and Southeast campuses administered the survey Feb. 19. The Columbus campus began participating March 11. In addition to Bloomington, the Indianapolis and Kokomo locations will also send out the survey Wednesday, and it will run through mid-April.
Since Fort Wayne's campus only recently became an IU institution, it will not take part in this survey but will be included in future ones, Springston said.
This will be the second time a sexual assault climate survey is administered on these campuses. Bloomington launched its first survey in 2014, and other campuses followed in 2016. Data from that first survey has been used to assess programming and education and work toward enhancing it, Springston said in an email.
“We will use the data from the 2019 survey to see how our campus programs have impacted student understanding and how student experiences may have changed over the last four years,” she said.
Only a random sample of undergraduate and graduate students will receive the email to participate, Springston said. But students who do not receive an invitation and are interested in providing feedback can email itsonus@iu.edu.
“We are always interested in hearing from any student for feedback and recommendations on how to make IU a better and safer campus,” she said.
