Report Reveals New Data on Sexual Assault and Misconduct in Higher Education

Westat, a research and data collection organization for education, health, and social policy industries, has released a new report that tracks the current state of sexual misconduct on 10 large university campuses. The report builds on a similar 2019 survey from the Association of American Universities in an effort to identify trends over the past five years.

The 2024 Higher Education Sexual Misconduct and Awareness Survey draws from data gathered from 42,133 survey responses from undergraduate, graduate, and professional students at 10 participating universities: the California Institute of Technology, Georgetown University, Harvard University, Iowa State University, Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Virginia, Washington University at St. Louis, and Yale University.

According to the survey results, nearly 19 percent of women students and over 21 percent of nonbinary, transgender, and genderqueer students experienced some form of nonconsensual sexual contact by force or inability to consent, compared to 6.5 percent of male students. Notably, less than one third of these victims reported their experience after the incident. While still prevalent among women and genderqueer students, the overall rate of nonconsensual sexual contact decreased between 2019 and 2024.

Roughly 19 percent of all survey respondents reported experiencing sexual harassment, a slight decrease from the rate of sexual harassment in 2019. Since first enrolling in school, the prevalence rate of experiencing intimate partner violence was 8.3 percent and the prevalence rate of experiencing stalking was 5.8 percent. These prevalence rates have remained consistent since 2019.