A sign in front of the entrance to the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance on CU Boulder’s East Campus. Nov. 16, 2023. (Henry Larson/CU Independent)T
According to survey data released Monday, the rates of sexual assault, sexual harassment and intimate partner abuse has increased at the University of Colorado Boulder since data was last collected in 2021.
The rate of sexual assault among undergraduate women, the group most affected, increased 3% compared to 2021. Intimate partner violence went up 4% among the same group. When compared to 2015, however, these rates, in addition to rates of stalking and sexual exploitation, have declined.
The rate of sexual harassment saw the largest increase since 2021 – with 44% of undergraduate women having reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment. This rate is also an uptick from the 28% measured in 2015. Some of the increase could be a result of the 2024 survey’s expanded definition of sexual harassment to include actions like catcalling, but more will be known as the data continues to be analyzed in the coming months.
Experts at the Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance say the decrease in the rates of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, sexual exploitation and stalking since 2015 could be a combination of many factors, namely lingering effects of the COVID pandemic. Other factors could be that, compared to 2015, people are generally consuming less alcohol and waiting longer to become sexually active.
The Sexual Assault and Related Harms survey was first conducted in 2015 and then again in 2021. The survey asks CU Boulder undergraduate and graduate students if they’ve experienced sexual misconduct – sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, intimate partner abuse and stalking – since becoming a student at the university. The 2024 survey gathered responses between Oct. 22 and Dec. 9.
“[The survey] drives our prevention efforts and informs where we should be focusing our energy and attention as a campus,” said Teresa Wroe, the assistant vice chancellor of prevention education and deputy Title IX coordinator at OIEC.
Sexual assault
The rate of sexual assault among undergraduate women increased from 15% to 18% in 2024. For graduate women, the rate increased from 1% to 6% over the same period. The rate among undergraduate men saw a smaller increase of 2% and that among graduate men saw no change. The sexual assault rates among all four groups remained lower than in 2015, when the survey was first conducted.
“We were wondering if we would see a big uptick looking more like our previous survey in 2015 because students are back living their lives, being more social, not worried about infection,” said Julie Volkens, the director of assessment at OIEC. “That small uptick, still concerning, of 15 to 18%, that was a little bit of a surprise.”
Volkens said she hopes the less-than-expected uptick is a result of OIEC’s prevention efforts, though she said it could also be lingering effects of the COVID pandemic.
The survey also determined sexual assault was more prevalent among certain vulnerable groups.
Students who identify as bisexual or pansexual experienced the highest rates of sexual assault. The same is true for students who reported having a chronic mental health disability. Undergraduate women who reported experiencing financial insecurity were more likely to have been assaulted compared to those who rarely or never experienced such insecurity.
Expanded definition of sexual harassment
Sexual harassment saw the largest increase of the five categories captured in the survey, rising 25% among undergraduate women from 2021 to 2024.
The increase could partly be the result of an expanded definition of sexual harassment. In response to research and student feedback after the 2021 sexual misconduct survey, OIEC decided to expand the list of behaviors included in the sexual harassment category. The newest survey included behaviors like catcalling, leering and personal space invasion.
In 2024, using the expanded definition, 27% of all survey respondents, regardless of gender, reported experiencing sexual harassment. Using the old definition, 20% of survey respondents reported experiencing sexual harassment, up from 10% in 2021. Among undergraduate women, the rate of sexual harassment increased from 19% in 2021 to 34% in 2024 using the 2021 definition and 44% including the new behaviors.
Volkens said while the expanded definition can partly explain the increase in the rate of sexual harassment, it doesn’t completely.
“Something else is going on,” Volkens said. “What we’ll be doing over the next 18 months is continuing to analyze these things in depth.”
Both Volkens and Wroe also noted that an increase doesn’t necessarily mean harassment is occurring more often.
“People may also be recognizing things happening to them that before they would have waved off and just said, ‘that’s just something that happens,’” Volkens said.
Response rate
The survey’s response rate was 29% among graduate students and 28% among undergraduate students. While Volkens said this rate is comparable to other universities and provides OIEC with data that accurately reflects the campus community, it is much lower than the response rates recorded in 2015. That year, about 40% of undergraduate and 48% of graduate students responded.
“Unlike in 2015, when our response rate was higher, students don’t read their email anymore, and that is how we send them a unique link,” Volkens said.
When the next survey is conducted in a few years, Volkens said OIEC plans to provide a QR code for students to access the survey.
“We think this is really going to help us in terms of response rate,” she said.
Looking ahead
The results released Monday are only the first phase of analysis. In the coming months, Volkens and Erin McPherson, OIEC’s quantitative research analyst, will be digging deeper into the data to understand more about how different aspects of a person’s identity – things like sexual orientation, gender identity and race – might impact their experiences with sexual misconduct.
Currently, the survey is broken down into four categories – undergraduate women, undergraduate men, graduate women and graduate men. According to Volkens, fewer than 50 students identified as gender diverse, and it will take her and McPherson time to analyze that data accurately.
“At this level of analysis, we don’t want to start breaking out those 50 students and their experiences, because we have so much more nuance about them,” Volkens said. “We let people tell us who they are, and that process of being accurate, it just takes a little time.”
The team plans to release their findings related to gender identity and sexual orientation in the next phase of analysis this summer.
The full survey results are available on the OIEC website, which will be updated as more findings become available.
Contact CU Independent Managing Editor at celia.frazier@colorado.edu.
