Twenty-three percent of undergraduate women experienced nonconsensual sexual contact since entering their university, according to a report published Monday.

The 288-page comprehensive study about incidents of sexual assault recorded from 150,000 students at 27 American universities was released by the Association of American Universities. Syracuse University was not one of the 27 schools that took part in the study.

Researchers noted that the percentages could be “somewhat overstated” due to the number of students who did and did not respond to the survey, according to an article by The Washington Post.

Twenty percent of students said sexual assault and misconduct is “very or extremely problematic on their own campus,” according to the article.

The AAU decided to develop a scientific survey to gauge students’ experiences with sexual assault and misconduct in an effort to combat this abuse on their campuses, according to the report. The survey was implemented at 27 institutions of higher education (IHEs), 26 of which are members of the AAU, according to the report.

The report provides results for five central questions related to sexual assault and misconduct at these IHEs, including, according to the report; how extensive nonconsensual sexual contact is; how extensive sexual harassment, stalking and intimate partner violence are; who victims are; to whom victims report or talk about the incidents with; and what the campus climate around sexual assault and misconduct is.

At 14 universities, 19-24 percent of the female population faced sexual assault and at 10 universities this percentage was between 25 and 30, according to the report.

The percentage of students who faced sexual assault was highest in the population of students who identified as transgender/genderqueer, gender non-conforming, questioning or something other than what was listed in the survey, according to the report.

“The AAU study is one of the first to implement a uniform methodology across multiple IHEs and to produce statistically reliable estimates for each IHE,” the report said.

The methodology of the study includes listing separate estimates for incidents that involve two types of sexual contact — penetration and sexual touching — and four tactics — physical force, drugs and alcohol, coercion or absence of affirmative consent — as well as behaviors such as sexual harassment, stalking and intimate partner violence, according to the report.

Some universities included in the report are as follows:

• Brown University
• California Institute of Technology
• Case Western Reserve University
• Columbia University
• Cornell University
• Dartmouth University
• Harvard University
• Iowa State University
• Ohio State University
• Purdue University
• University of Florida
• University of Michigan
• University of Minnesota Twin Cities
• University of Missouri-Columbia
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• University of Oregon
• University of Pittsburgh
• University of Southern California
• University of Texas at Austin
• University of Virginia
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Washington University in St. Louis
• Yale University

Published on September 21, 2015 at 11:05 pm

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