Campus Sexual Assault: Forging an Action-Focused Research Agenda

Policy and Practice Context

In the policy realm, guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Education’s (2011, 2014) Office of Civil Rights in 2011 and 2014 clarified the scope of IHE obligations pursuant to established federal law, including Title IX (Education Amendments of 1972) and the Clery Act (Higher Educational Amendments Act of 1989). This guidance underscored the obligations of IHEs to maintain robust systems for investigating and adjudicating cases of alleged sexual assault on campus, protecting the interests of accusers, and preventing sexual violence. In 2013, the U.S. Congress enacted the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination (SaVE) Act, which both expanded the range of requirements related to reporting, investigation, and disciplinary processes related to cases of CSA and required that IHEs adopt proactive strategies to reduce the incidence of sexual assault on campus (Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013). The following year, the White House Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault (2014), chaired by Vice President Joe Biden, set forth a comprehensive three-pronged national strategy focused on (a) assessing and monitoring campus climate; (b) developing and implementing effective prevention strategies, including those that engage bystanders and men; and (c) improving systems of response to reported incidents of sexual assault on college campuses, including mechanisms of investigation, adjudication, and addressing the needs of survivors.

More recently, the policy landscape has continued to evolve, amid concerns within some sectors that the 2011 and 2014 guidance issued under the Obama Administration offered insufficient due process provisions protecting the rights of those accused. In September 2017, the Trump Administration rescinded the Obama-era guidance, granting IHEs greater latitude in establishing standards of proof in cases of alleged sexual misconduct (U.S. Department of Education, 2017). In some respects, the ongoing dispute over the interpretation of federal policy defines the contours of debate over effective responses to campus sexual assault, including tensions between the needs of victims and the rights of the accused, and between preserving institutional autonomy and ensuring organizational accountability in the interests of community safety.

Amid these policy developments, IHEs have been increasingly called upon to critically examine and reform their systems of both responding to alleged cases of sexual assault and preventing campus-based sexual victimization. In the domain of incident response, many colleges and universities have continued to face a range of programmatic and logistical challenges, including those related to systems of investigation, ensuring due process within disciplinary proceedings, and developing appropriate sanctions and interventions for perpetrators. Yet, although systemic lapses remain within a significant number of IHEs, many others have dedicated significant focus and resources on developing innovative models for removing barriers to reporting, improving investigations, and ensuring fair and expeditious adjudication of sexual assault allegations.

Equally important, many IHEs have developed and deployed a range of prevention-focused programs and initiatives grounded in public health practice, including those involving bystander engagement, peer-driven interventions, sexual assault awareness campaigns, self-defense programs, and the innovative use of social media and other technology. The most cutting-edge initiatives have typically been deployed in a coordinated and collaborative fashion, with input and involvement from student groups, campus safety officials, student affairs and residential life administrators, health and wellness staff, community agency partners, and others.

Role of Research in Advancing Policy and Practice

In summary, we find ourselves at a critical moment in the evolution of policy and practice surrounding CSA—a moment characterized by both the challenge of unresolved policy debates and the opportunity presented by expanded public discourse surrounding sexual violence and promising practice innovations occurring within the field. In this context, there is a growing need for high-quality empirical research that can inform the development and advancement of effective modes of both prevention and response.

As the problem of CSA has commanded greater attention within the policy and practice communities, the field is primed for a vitalized program of action-oriented research that can

Moreover, the study of CSA may also contribute to the general base of knowledge surrounding the prevention of sexual violence within institutional settings. Although integrating research-based evidence into sexual violence policy has often been hampered by dominant myths and misconceptions surrounding both perpetrators and victims of sexual assault, IHEs offer a particularly promising setting for effectively bridging the domains of research and practice. As producers and purveyors of knowledge, colleges and universities can and should be at the forefront of developing collaborative, evidence-based innovations that can address underlying systemic factors that may promote or impede effective prevention efforts within organizational settings. Similarly, as members of their campus communities, university-based researchers working in this space are in a unique position to transcend their roles as outside observers and to serve as integral partners in forging effective solutions in conjunction with students, campus administrators, and other key communities of interest.

Issue Overview

It is our hope that this special issue will help to advance this relatively nascent but rapidly emerging field of inquiry, and that it will help to guide and inspire a new generation of researchers who can help advance the body of knowledge in this critical area of policy and practice.

Leading off the issue, McMahon and colleagues offer a comprehensive overview of the empirical research on CSA to date. Their analysis is focused on four key areas, which were identified for policy guidance in the 2014 White House Task force report “Not Alone”: prevalence of CSA and campus climate, prevention, responding effectively to CSA, and increasing transparency and improving enforcement. The authors evaluate the empirical literature through a socio-ecological framework, noting that individuals function within a multilayered environment influenced by groups, the community, and society. They note that many of the current prevention efforts focus on the individual-level changes, but suggest that there is a need to develop and evaluate better prevention and response strategies at the group, community, and societal levels.

The other three articles in this volume are based on empirical studies that help explain the prevalence and predictors of CSA as well as the public opinion about CSA prevention and response. Using National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data, Budd and colleagues analyzed the prevalence of CSA on a more inclusive population than has been studied previously. By including both male and female victims and perpetrators, and expanding the age range of potential victims, they found that 6% of CSA victims were male and many older than 23 years—the typical cut off age for studies on sexual assault. Their findings have important policy implications both for prevention and response to victims.

Although CSA research has advanced rapidly in the United States, it has been more limited in other national and cultural contexts. Using a two-wave longitudinal design in Chile and Turkey, Schuster and colleagues assessed risky sexual scripts to determine the likelihood of sexual aggression perpetration and found that more risky sexual scripts during the first wave of the study increased the probability of sexual aggression perpetration at the second wave. They also found that higher self-esteem increased the likelihood of perpetration in the Turkish male sample, while higher religiosity was correlated to with less risky sexual scripts in both samples.

Developing effective and responsive public policies to address campus sexual assault depends in part on shifting public knowledge and perceptions. In this vein, Mancini and colleagues offer an assessment of public perception of policies related to mandatory reporting, which numerous states have implemented in the wake of high-profile CSA cases. Among the reported survey findings, 64% of respondents believe a college administration’s policies can decrease the occurrence of sexual assault on college campuses, and 93% of people support mandatory reporting. As noted by the authors, this shows that the public holds institutions of higher learning responsible for effectively responding to sex crimes on college and university campuses.

Looking Ahead

The movement to end CSA is not new. For more than 60 years, researchers, activists, and advocates have worked tirelessly to better understand the problem and to find solutions. We do, however find ourselves at a moment of unprecedented opportunity, as the issue has attracted expanded policy focus and public discourse.

Certainly, significant gaps remain in our policies and practices—gaps that can be addressed in part through improving our base of empirical knowledge. In the United States, federal policies designed to guide IHEs in their handling sexual misconduct have largely focused on university investigation and adjudication practices. Yet, the efficacy of policies to instill compliance and reduce the incidence of sexual assaults on college campuses remains unclear, with most IHEs still reporting zero sexual offenses in their Clery statistics (American Association of University Women [AAUW], 2017). Given this, research that focuses attention on the systemic barriers to reporting and accountability is imperative.

In the domain of prevention, the 2014 Campus SaVE Act required IHEs to include prevention programming. Although activists have long pushed for a policy agenda that requires mandatory prevention programs at the student level, we have only recently begun to see a shift from interventions focused primarily on victimization prevention to those taking a more holistic approach involving perpetration prevention as well. In this domain, one particularly critical area beckoning for enhanced research attention involves improving our understanding of how men can be part of the solution to decreasing sexual assault on college campuses.

As noted by McMahon and colleagues, the field of CSA research also is lacking in research pertaining to some key “hidden” populations. For instance, most research on campus sexual assault focuses on situations involving men as perpetrators and women as victims, despite evidence that the inverse may be true in some instances. Other vastly understudied dimensions of CSA include campus sexual assault involving people from historically marginalized communities, including those identifying as LGBTQ+ and people of color. Both of these groups face relatively higher rates of sexual violence on college campuses, but are less likely to report it (Eisenberg, Lust, Mathiason, & Porta, 2017). Hence, a responsive program of research must address the unique needs of all people affected by sexual violence and misconduct, particularly those from such marginalized groups.

As research on CSA continues to evolve, it is especially vital that we work collectively to effectively capture and voices and experiences of all stakeholders, including those who have been directly affected by sexual violence as well as those who have not been so affected, but are nevertheless a critical part of the solution. This latter group includes students, campus administrators, faculty members, community partners, and others who must be effectively engaged if we are to achieve lasting systemic change to end sexual assault on college and university campuses.