MIT Releases Results of a Campus Survey on Sexual Assault and Misconduct

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently released the results of a survey conducted earlier this year on the occurrence of sexual assault in the MIT community and the perceptions and opinions regarding issues of sexual misconduct.

The researchers received responses from more than 3,800 undergraduate and graduate students at MIT, both male and female. Among undergraduate women, 10 percent of the respondents said that they had been sexually assaulted and 5 percent reported that they had been raped. Some 15 percent of women undergraduates reported sexual harassment and 14 percent said they had been stalked. All of the figures were lower for women graduate students.

Almost two thirds of the MIT students who had experienced unwanted sexual behavior said that they had told someone else about the incident. But only 5 percent of the victims said they notified police or the university administration in an official capacity.

The survey also contains data on students’ experiences with sexist jokes, crude behavior, sexist statements about the physical appearance or intellectual capabilities of women, and students’ responses to such behaviors and their experiences with bystander intervention to prevent sexual assault.

Note: About 35 percent of the students surveyed responded. The authors of the study stated that “it is not possible to know if students self-selected in or out of the survey in a way that would bias our results. It is difficult to determine whether students who have experienced sexual assault were more or less likely to respond to the survey.”

The report, Survey Results: 2014 Community Attitudes on Sexual Assault, may be downloaded by clicking here.