U. declines to join AAU sexual assault survey, will design survey of its own

The University will design its own sexual assault survey to comply with Title IX as opposed to using a survey designed by the Association of American Universities.

The decision was made by University President Christopher Eisgruber "83 following the unanimous recommendation of the new Faculty-Student Committee on Sexual Misconduct.

As part of its resolution agreement with the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, the University is required to provide a“description of tools used for conducting a climate check” by Jan. 15. The University may use a different survey in future years.

The survey, which will be administered this spring and distributed to all undergraduate and graduate students, will be modeled on a survey piloted at Rutgers University, University spokesperson Martin Mbugua said. The Rutgers survey was modeled on the recommendations of a White House task force studying sexual assault on college campuses. The federal government"s recommendations for conducting a climate check include assessing the extent of a campus’s sexual assault problem directly from victims; measuring “the context of victimization,” including the victim’s and perpetrator’s genders and whether the assault was reported to police; measuring both disclosure of crimes by victims and reporting by parties who know of an assault; assessing general perceptions of campus climate; measuring knowledge of a campus’s sexual assault policies and resources; and asking about dating violence.

More specific aspects of the survey’s design are still being handled by Vice Provost for Institutional Research Jed Marsh and the Faculty-Student Committee on Sexual Misconduct, Mbugua said. These details include determining proper incentives to take the survey and how to produce statistically reliable results, committee member Rebecca Basaldua ’15 said.

Marsh did not respond to a request for comment.

Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Michele Minter, who is also a co-chair of the committee, explained that the particular details that led the committee to endorse using an independent survey included the ability to tailor questions to the University community, such as asking about students’ experiences at eating clubs, a lack of information about the AAU survey when the committee met in December and time pressure to provide details to the OCR, she said.

“An independent survey meant we would be able to go ahead with that planning quite quickly,” she explained. “[The AAU survey] was made by good researchers, but there hasn’t been enough information to determine whether it would allow for customization and other things we were concerned about ... We want to be able to use this information to help the campus and all of the activities we do in this space.”

She added that the University intends to be transparent about what it learns and how it decides to use it.

Eisgruber deferred comment to Minter.

The goal of the climate check is to informstudents about how they can report sexual misconduct and to guide campus policymaking, according to the resolution agreement.

At a Nov. 30 Undergraduate Student Government town hall meeting about the required best online casino survey, USG senators expressed concern about the politicization of the survey. They noted that use of the AAU survey could undermine efforts to pass relevant legislation. They also expressed concerns about the ability to ask questions tailored to the University community and the transparency of the AAU survey’s results.

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Before the meeting, Eisgruber had emailed USG president Shawon Jackson ’15 to gain support for the AAU survey.

“I hope that I can persuade the USG not to oppose the survey, or, at a minimum, to wait a few days until we and the AAU can supply more information about the planned survey,” Eisgruber said in the email. “The proposed AAU survey is almost certainly the best chance we have to collect data that both satisfies scientific criteria of reliability and also permits cross-institutional comparisons.”

Ultimately, USG passed a resolution calling for the data from any survey to be released to the University community and calling on the University torefrain from agreeing to take part in the AAU survey by the Dec. 1 deadline to allow time for further study. Minter said the AAU would have likely been conciliatory had the University decided to go with the AAU survey past the deadline.

Jackson said he was grateful the Faculty-Student Committee on Sexual Misconduct was able to have a full conversation about which survey was best for the University community.

“We passed along our resolution to a few administrators, and then the Faculty-Student Committee on Sexual Misconduct considered input that was brought up at the senate meeting and the input they got from various members of the committee, and they made the final recommendation to President Eisgruber, who ultimately adopted the recommendation,” Jackson said. “Throughout the design process for the survey, it’s important to continue gathering input from students, faculty members and staff members to ensure the survey is one that’s best for our community.”

Basaldua said the methods used by the AAU survey were not up to the best of social science and were likely to render cross-comparison of data between campuses less useful than promised.

“Many times the response rates [at other campuses] have been abysmal, 10-30 percent of the student body responding,” she said. “The AAU survey planned to give students a $5 incentive and wasn’t using other social science methods to ensure a representative sample, which was a main concern ... You cannot cross-compare between universities when you don’t even know what the sample sizes were.”

She said she could not yet comment on other ideas to ensure a representative sample but added that it was her understanding that Eisgruber intends to be fully transparent with the survey’s results. She noted that the University did a similar survey about six years ago, and some of the questions were very vague, rendering the results difficult to understand. The survey was leaked to The Daily Princetonian in 2013.

“[That the survey was only leaked and never released] to the student body was in itself shocking,” she said. “There are many reasons students should take this survey, and one reason is to know what"s going on on our campus.”