The Association of American Universities (AAU) announced today that 28 universities will be participating in the survey regarding sexual assault. The University of Oregon is one of them.
The survey will take place in April. Comprised of over 800,000 student participants, it will be conducted and analyzed by Westat, one of the nations most respected research companies.
Westat and a team of experts from universities are creating the survey based on an instrument developed by the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.
It will document the frequency and characteristics of campus sexual assault and sexual harassment. The information will then be assessed in a way that allows the universities to compare their results while still maintaining confidentiality with the respondents.
At the end of the survey, each university will receive its own set of data and from there, each university will decide how the information will be disseminated.
“Our primary purpose in conducting this survey is to help our institutions gain a better understanding of this complex problem on their own campuses as well as nationally,” AAU President Hunter Rawlings said.
The AAU encourages universities to share all of their data.