Introduction

From October 19, 2015 through November 16, 2015 the University of Colorado Boulder (“CU-Boulder”) administered the Sexual Misconduct Survey to all undergraduate, graduate, and non-degree seeking students. The purpose of the survey was to understand and assess students’ experiences of sexual misconduct as well as their understanding and awareness of campus resources and reporting options. We also included a section on bystander intervention behaviors, or what to do when one witnesses a potentially harmful situation, since bystander skills development has been a key educational initiative on our campus.

This project began with the assembly of a Survey Development Team (“Development Team”) comprised of experts from campus departments that specifically address the issue of sexual misconduct from either a response or prevention perspective along with survey staff and analysts from Institutional Research in the Office of Data Analytics. The Development Team is listed in Table 1. The Development Team contacted other campus experts and key stakeholders who would comprise our Survey Advisory Board (“Advisory Board”). Assembling an advisory board was important for obtaining input and feedback from valuable campus constituents. Members of the Advisory Board are also listed in Table 1.

The Development Team reviewed other publicly available surveys including Not Alone: The First Report of the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault sample climate questions, the AAU/Westat Survey, the MIT Community Attitudes on Sexual Assault Survey, and the Administrator-Researcher Campus Climate Collaborative (ARC3) instrument. The ARC3 survey was made available for public use in September 2015. Our team reached out to lead faculty involved in the ARC3 instrument development including Kevin Swartout at Georgia State University and Antonia Abbey at Wayne State University for consultation prior to the public release. We are extremely grateful for their generosity and expertise.

The Development Team designed the survey instrument, and the staff from Institutional Research built the survey in Qualtrics. The Advisory Board members had the opportunity to review all relevant materials related to the survey, test the instrument, and give extensive user feedback as the survey developed.

Sexual Misconduct Survey Development Team

  • Valerie Simons, Executive Director and Title IX Coordinator, Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance
  • Robert Boswell, Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement
  • Robert Stubbs, Director of Institutional Research, Office of Data Analytics
  • Teresa Wroe, Director of Education and Prevention/Deputy Title IX Coordinator, Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance
  • Julie Volckens, Associate Director of Assessment and Education, Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance
  • Frances Costa, Senior Researcher, Institutional Research, Office of Data Analytics
  • Jessica Ladd-Webert, Director, Office of Victim Assistance

Sexual Misconduct Survey Advisory Board

  • Joanne Belknap, Professor, Ethnic Studies
  • Celeste Montoya, Associate Professor, Women and Gender Studies
  • Amanda Linsenmeyer, Director, Women’s Resource Center (WRC)
  • Randy McCrillis, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, Director, Cultural Unity & Engagement Center (CUE)
  • Scarlet Bowen, Director, Gender and Sexuality Center
  • Melissa Zak, Chief of Police, CU Police Department
  • Sarah Williams, Assistant Director, Office of Victim Assistance
  • Stephanie Baldwin, Assistant Director, Greek Life
  • Christopher Bader, Counselor & Sports Psychologist, Athletics
  • Chloe Strascina-Dower, Undergraduate student
  • Dkeama Alexis, Undergraduate student
  • Shannon Lacy, Undergraduate student
  • Clifford Bridges, Graduate student
  • Joseph Stenberg, Graduate student

Survey Content

The Sexual Misconduct Survey assesses the occurrence of those behaviors prohibited by the University of Colorado Sexual Misconduct Policy:

  1. Sexual assault – non-consensual sexual intercourse and non-consensual sexual contact
  2. Sexual exploitation
  3. Sexual harassment
  4. Intimate partner abuse
  5. Stalking

Each of the above five forms of sexual misconduct was assessed in a separate section of the survey that asked about personal experiences of victimization that occurred during students’ time at the university. Although research demonstrates that many young people experience these types of harms prior to coming to college, our focus was on incidents students experienced while enrolled at CU-Boulder, as that is what affects our campus climate most directly. We asked about all incidents of sexual misconduct including experiences that happened both on and away from campus, throughout the calendar year.

In this inaugural assessment of the prevalence of sexual misconduct at CU-Boulder, our survey did not include questions about individuals’ perpetration of sexual misconduct. Reasons for this decision include concern about the length of the survey and about the complexity of responding to both personal experiences of victimization and perpetration in one survey.

The survey began with questions about bystander intervention behaviors and awareness of confidential resources and reporting options. These questions applied broadly to all students regardless of whether they had experienced sexual misconduct and provided a more approachable introduction to the survey before assessment of personal experiences of victimization.

Below we describe the development of survey items that assess students’ experiences of the five categories of sexual misconduct.

Personal Experience: Sexual Assault (Non-consensual Sexual Intercourse and Non-consensual Sexual Contact)

A key study that shaped our approach to the assessment of sexual assault was The Effects of Frame of Reference on Responses to Questions about Sexual Assault Victimization and Perpetration by Antonia Abbey, Michele Parkhill, and Mary Koss (2005). This study demonstrated that describing the tactics used by perpetrators to obtain non-consensual sexual contact before listing the specific non-consensual behaviors increases survey respondents’ disclosure of these experiences. The Development Team viewed our survey not only as a method to assess incidents of sexual misconduct, but also as an educational tool to increase students’ understanding of what constitutes sexual misconduct; describing the tactics that were used before asking questions about the behaviors associated with an incident aligned with that goal. It may also have aided survey respondents’ in recalling an incident and in differentiating consensual sexual penetration and contact from non-consensual sexual penetration and contact.

The question sequence in this section of the survey was:

  1. Introduction to tactics (no response options)
  2. Questions about the non-consensual sexual behaviors a survey respondent had experienced (respondents could check all that applied)
  3. Questions about the tactics (respondents could check all tactics that had been used)

There were six types of tactics included:

  1. Catching you off guard and unexpectedly doing something you did not want
  2. Ignoring your verbal or other efforts to get them to stop
  3. Using deception, manipulation, or emotional threats
  4. Using your incapacitation (i.e. semi-conscious, passed out, unconscious, physically unable to move, unable to realize what was happening) from alcohol or other drugs, illness, injury, disability or other circumstances
  5. Using physical threats or intimidation
  6. Using physical force

There was an additional option that survey respondents could select if none of the tactics applied. Selection of this option could indicate that we are missing coercive tactics in our policy, or that the behavior did not rise to the level to be considered non-consensual by the respondent. If needed, we will conduct follow-up focus groups to understand this more clearly.

The questions about sexual assault represented three groupings of behaviors—sexual exposure, sexual touching, and sexual penetration/intercourse. Sexual exposure includes someone being made to expose their genitals or masturbate. Touching includes touching someone’s genitals or other parts of the body in a sexual way or making someone touch another’s genitals or masturbate them. Penetration includes both sexual penetration of someone’s vagina or anus by a finger, penis, or object, and oral sex by a mouth or tongue on someone’s genitals.

These groupings were broken out into twelve distinct behaviors. For each behavior a survey respondent could select whether they had experienced the behavior (1) once, (2) more than once, (3) not at all, or (4) were unsure.

Respondents who selected “once” or “more than once” and reported the use of one or more coercive tactics were considered to have experienced sexual assault. These respondents were prompted to answer a follow-up question about how many incidents the behaviors represented. The term “incident” was used in the survey as meaning separate situations where these behaviors occurred. Asking about separate incidents applied to sexual assault, sexual exploitation, and sexual harassment. For intimate partner abuse and stalking we did not separate by incident but rather by number of relationships due to the ongoing nature of these types of behaviors.

The data on tactics and behaviors related to incidents of sexual assault as well as frequencies of bystander behaviors and understanding of reporting options will be compiled and released in Phase I of our data analysis in February 2016.

Survey respondents were given the opportunity to describe four separate incidents of sexual assault. The instructions explained that the set of questions about an incident were specific to a single incident and would be repeated for each separate incident they chose to describe.

Respondents who reported experiencing sexual assault were also asked a range of follow-up questions including time of occurrence (year and semester; during an academic break/recess); location of incident (on or off campus and specific location); association with a university-affiliated event; perpetrator characteristics (number of offenders, gender of offender(s), perpetrator affiliation with school, relationship to victim); disclosure and reporting actions; use and evaluation of campus or local support services; reasons for not disclosing or reporting; experiences of retaliation; and reasons for not reporting retaliation.

These follow-up questions were presented for all other categories of sexual misconduct (with the exception of sexual harassment) if a survey respondent indicated that the behavior had occurred. Follow-up questions were not included for sexual harassment because the vast majority takes the form of hostile environment, and incidents may not as clearly be attributable to a single incident or perpetrator.

The descriptive data on incidents, perpetrator characteristics, use and evaluation of reporting processes and support services, reasons for not reporting, and retaliation will be released in Phase II of our data analysis in June 2016.

Personal Experience: Sexual Exploitation

University policy distinguishes sexual exploitation from non-consensual sexual contact. Our policy defines sexual exploitation as conduct that takes sexual advantage of another person for the benefit of anyone other than that person without that person’s affirmative consent. The questions in this section of the survey focused on the following experiences:

  • Having someone expose their genitals or masturbate in front of you
  • Having someone view your sexual activity, intimate body parts, or nakedness in a place where you had reasonable expectation of privacy
  • Having someone take photographs or videos of intimate parts and/or genitals, you naked, or of you engaging in sexual behavior
  • Having someone make you engage in sexual activity with another person (i.e., prostituted you) for the perpetrator’s own benefit, such as to acquire money, status, or other advantages

Personal Experience: Sexual Harassment

There are two different types of sexual harassment as reflected in university policy:  quid pro quo (“this for that”) or hostile environment. Fourteen questions assessed a range of behaviors considered sexual harassment based on our policy. These questions asked about the following behaviors: (1) repeatedly made sexual remarks, comments, jokes, or shared pictures that were insulting or offensive; (2) repeatedly made inappropriate or offensive comments about the person or someone else’s body, appearance, or sexual activities; (3) repeatedly said crude or gross sexual things, made gestures or used body language that was sexual in nature, or tried to get the person to engage in conversation about sexual matters when they didn’t want to; (4) emailed, texted, or used social media to post offensive sexual remarks, jokes, stories, pictures, or videos to the person that they didn’t want; (5) continued to ask the person to go out, get dinner, have drinks, or have sex even though the victim said “no”; or (6) made the person feel threatened or bribed with a reward for engaging in sexual behavior.

Personal Experience: Intimate Partner Abuse and Stalking

Some of the surveys that we reviewed asked survey respondents about intimate partner abuse and stalking only if they indicated at the beginning of the survey that they had been in a romantic, sexual, partnered, or dating relationship. In contrast, we did not limit who saw these questions; all survey respondents had the opportunity to read through the behaviors and report if they had experienced them.

Intimate Partner Abuse. Fifteen survey questions assessed the range of behaviors considered intimate partner abuse. Survey respondents were instructed that they could have experienced these behaviors in a current or former relationship, regardless of the length of the relationship. The behaviors included (1) constant control or jealousy; (2) threats by a partner to hurt themselves, the person, or others; (3) any type of physical assault; and (4) destruction of property or other menacing acts to scare or control the person.

Stalking. Stalking was defined as a course of conduct that would cause a reasonable person to fear for their safety or the safety of others or to suffer emotional distress. Three repeated pursuit behaviors associated with stalking were used in the questionnaire, including (1) made unwanted phone calls, sent emails, voice, text, or instant messages, or posted messages, pictures, or videos on social networking sites; (2) showed up somewhere or waited for the person when they didn’t want that person to be there; and (3) spied on, watched or followed the person, either in person or using devices or software.

Confidentiality

The CU-Boulder Institutional Review Board determined that this study did not require IRB review, as this project does not involve research and is not generalizable. The goal of this survey was to fill gaps in our understanding of the frequency and types of sexual misconduct experienced by CU-Boulder students and to use the survey findings for program improvement.

It was explicitly explained at the beginning of the survey that information disclosed by participants would not constituent an official report to the university. Information about confidential support and official reporting were included up front and at the bottom of every page throughout the survey. A thorough explanation of how information that would permit identification of individuals would be kept strictly confidential was included up front. Each student received a personal invitation with a unique link to the survey to ensure that students could only complete the survey once. Additionally, write-in responses were not included in order to avoid triggering a university investigative process.

Demographic Information

The survey ended with questions asking about demographic information, including questions about gender identity and sexual orientation. Each survey respondent received a unique link to the survey that tied their responses to their student information, including current class level, college, residency status, and race/ethnicity. This information was kept strictly confidential and once that information was captured, the link to survey respondents’ personal information was broken

Incentives

All participants who completed the survey were offered the option of receiving a $5 campus cash deposit to their student account.