Tracking Campus Climate Survey Use and Results Among Aau Institutions

Background/Introductions: Since the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault recommended campuses conduct regular climate surveys on sexual assault (SA), institutions of higher education have widely adopted such tools. Well-designed, regularly administered climate surveys let institutions assess progress in shifting campus climate while giving opportunities to compare findings to peer institutions. However, comparisons are complicated by variation in tools and recall periods used to measure violence. Further, some multicampus studies (e.g., the AAU/HSEMA campus climate study) have reported large decreases in SA prevalence, complicating administers’ ability to assess whether changes stem from campus efforts, broader societal shifts, or a combination thereof. Considering campuses expend time, energy, and resources conducting climate surveys, additional research is needed to better understand 1) how campuses have used these surveys over time and 2) broader trends in publicly reported survey findings.

Methods: We used Google and web archives to locate campus climate survey results from American AAU member institutions, recording SA prevalence among campuses that reported results separately based on student level and gender identity. After locating 146 sets of campus climate survey results from 60 AAU member institutions between 2014 and 2025, we conducted a series of mixed effects regressions to determine how year of survey administration and victimization measures were associated with SA prevalence among undergraduate cisgender women, cisgender men, and transgender/gender-diverse students.

Results: Schools that administered at least one campus climate survey, on average, administered 2.4 surveys (SD = 1.2). Excluding the 14 campuses for which we found results for only one survey administration, schools took 3.3 years (SD = 1.4) between survey administrations on average. Unsurprisingly given our sample, the academic years in which the most campuses administered surveys were 2014-15, 2018-19, and 2023-24 (the years in which the AAU and HESMA studies were fielded). Schools reported at university victimization prevalence (n=133) more often than past year prevalence (n=89), but most campuses reported both results (n=77).

In our mixed effects regression models, year of survey administration was negatively associated with the prevalence of past year (ß = -0.62, p < .001) and at university (ß = -0.59, p < .001) sexual assault among cisgender women, but not cisgender men or transgender/gender-diverse undergrads across either recall period. We also observed associations between the tools used and victimization prevalence among cisgender undergraduate men and women (e.g., the sexual experiences survey was associated with higher prevalence rates across both recall periods).

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that, among AAU institutions, there is evidence of a reduction in SA prevalence over the past decade among undergraduate cisgender women, though the causes remain unclear. We also observed evidence that tools campuses used meaningfully impacted victimization prevalence, though further research is needed to better understand how measures impact prevalence estimates. Combined, findings suggest a need for additional study of factors (e.g., campus prevention efforts, broader societal shifts) that may explain reduced SA prevalence among undergraduate cis women, as well as further exploration of how student understandings of SA measures have evolved over time.