Sexual Assault Climate Survey Sample Design Methods: A Review and Recommendations to Improve Response and Reduce Bias

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Summarize design strategies for expanding saliency of campus climate surveys. Climate surveys that measure the prevalence of sexual assault at colleges or universities have become more common; however, the optimal survey design for a particular school is not always clear. This review examines the design and data collection methods schools have used to administer climate surveys from 2014 to 2019.

Method

A systematic search of 115 campus climate survey reports from 68 schools was performed. Response rates for five design features – incentives, selection method, field period, survey reminders, and multiple survey administrations – were summarized to determine the design that minimizes bias best.

Results

Response rates vary across each design feature. The type of incentive and frequency of reminder e-mails appear to have the greatest influence on response rates.

Discussion and conclusion

The recommended design features that best improve response and likely reduce bias are a hybrid sample design with mixed $10 promised and lottery incentive, a 4-week field period, and more than one reminder e-mail per week in field.

KEYWORDS:

• Campus climate surveys
• sexual assault
• sample design
• incentive
• bias reduction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/26408066.2022.2083460

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.