Campus Climate Profiles Associated with Rates of Sexual Violence

Background and Purpose: Multiple studies have found that around 20% of undergraduate cisgender women experience sexual assault during their time on campus. Prevalence rates, however, vary widely across campuses, suggesting that different campus environments might exacerbate or mitigate risk. One framework for thinking about campus environments is a multidimensional campus climate, which can include things like whether students feel a sense of belonging on campus and the campus’ demographic diversity. Despite growing evidence about the importance of campus climate, little is known about how specific campus-level factors might influence the likelihood of a student experiencing sexual assault. In this study, we explore whether there are distinct profiles of campus climate, and whether those profiles are associated with different rates of sexual violence.

Method: We used data from the National College Health Assessment (NCHA). The data set contained information from 197,498 students on 306 campuses from Fall 2021 to Spring 2023. Because we were interested in campus climate, we aggregated student level data and created a campus level dataset for this analysis. To determine class membership, we used three variables reflecting aspects of felt climate (belonging, loneliness, and safety), two indicators of behavioral climate (binge drinking, partying), and five indicators of the diversity climate (microaggressions, discrimination, and proportions of students who are first generation, sexual and gender minorities, and racial minorities). We compared fit indices and assessed interpretability to determine a final class solution. Once we selected the best-fitting solution, we compared campuses in each profile to determine whether profile membership was associated with different rates of sexual violence. We also conducted latent class multinomial regression to determine how campus characteristics (e.g. enrollment size) were associated with latent profile membership.

Results: A four-profile solution best fit the data. The profiles are best characterized as: 1) high partying and low belonging, 2) high belonging with low diversity, 3) high diversity and belonging, low parting, and 4) high loneliness and diversity with low inclusiveness. Campuses fitting these four profiles did differ significantly in their rates of sexual assault, with profile 4 having the highest rates of sexual assault and profile 3 having the lowest rates. Campuses in profile 4 were more likely to be private and bachelor’s granting institutions. Campuses in profile 3 were more likely to have 10-20 thousand students.

Conclusions: This study contributes to a small but growing body of research that explores campus context factors that are associated with the risk of sexual violence. Of particular interest is that the identified campus profiles with the highest and lowest rates of sexual violence both had relatively high levels of diversity. However, those campuses in the profile with the lowest rates had high levels of belonging, while those in the profile with the highest rates had high levels of microaggressions and discrimination. This suggests that creating inclusive campuses where students feel a sense of belonging might help mitigate the risk of sexual violence.