Press "Enter" to skip to content

Coltrane consults Freyd on AAU sexual violence survey

In brief: It’s as if the US Census refused to break out population data by state. I’m not sure this AAU survey would be fundable through the NSF or NIH given its restrictions on sharing the data.

11/19/2014 update: Coltrane consults Freyd on AAU survey

Francesco Fontana  has the report in the Emerald, here:

Interim president Scott Coltrane released the following statement regarding the survey.

“The fact that the AAU is proposing member institutions participate brings a great deal of credibility to the survey,” Coltrane said. “However, Jennifer Freyd also has a great deal of credibility with the university, and her expertise is important to consider. We will need to spend some time weighing the pros and cons before determining what is in the best interest of the university as we work to address this critical issue.”

11/18/2014 update: UO should ignore AAU’s anti-science effort to control rape survey biz

Chronicle and Huffington Post report criticisms of AAU:

Chronicle:

So why would researchers who study sexual assault speak out against a proposed survey that would gather more information about that long-ignored national problem?

One reason, the researchers say, is a lack of transparency. Universities are being asked to commit to a survey that, they write in the letter, is “proprietary and therefore not available for scientific examination.”

According to the letter from the AAU, while aggregated results will be shared widely, the results for a specific university will be provided only to that university. The researchers have also raised doubts about who will design the survey and worry that, rather than bring more attention to the issue, the AAU’s survey “may well relieve institutions of the incentive to perform valid surveys conducted by those with expertise in researching campus sexual assault.”

Huffington:

A group of researchers sent a letter Monday calling on the leaders of 60 top universities to reject a sexual assault survey that, the researchers warn, could interfere with the federal government’s efforts to combat sexual assault on campus.

Sixteen professors from a number of campuses, led by University of Oregon psychology professor Jennifer Freyd, wrote a letter to the presidents of all member institutions of the Association of American Universities, a higher education trade group that counts some of the country’s top public and private research universities as members, including all eight Ivy League schools. The letter criticized the trade group for trying to head off congressional lawmakers and the White House by developing a campus sexual assault survey that the signatories say could undermine the government’s efforts.

AAU announced Friday it was contracting with the firm Westat to create a campus climate survey and administer it to as many of its member institutions that choose to participate.

The researchers contend that AAU’s survey will undermine the proposal by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators to require each college to conduct its own campus climate survey, in order to gauge the prevalence of sexual assault at those schools.

The letter urges member institutions not to participate in AAU’s survey. The universities’ cooperation, opponents of AAU’s effort fear, could allow the higher education lobby to argue that a federal mandate for a sexual assault survey is not needed. This would be a major blow to the assault survivors who pushed lawmakers to take on the issue.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), a coauthor of the Senate campus sexual assault bill, backed up the professors’ arguments. …

11/17/2014 update:

The AAU has a budget of a bit more than $5M. It’s a modest operation – about 30% of the budget goes to a few well paid top executives, the rest is mostly for staff and office expenses, they do a little lobbying of congress for more NSF and NIH money and so on. Annual dues for the 62 member schools are only about $90K.

But suddenly the AAU wants to go big into the euphemistically named “campus climate” survey business. They’ve hired an expensive consulting firm and they’re asking the AAU schools to chip in another $85,000 each to participate in the survey. Why is the AAU going out on a financial limb like this?

Because they want control of the survey questions, the dissemination of the results, and the spin. The announcement letter, here, focuses on the fact that the AAU will not release any information that would allow students or parents to compare reported sexual assault rates across campuses – which of course is exactly the information these groups want. And this also will make it impossible to use this survey evidence to answer questions about the effectiveness of particular universities efforts to reduce rape and sexual violence with various interventions.

The problem is made worse by the fact that the AAU will also not allow universities to add additional questions to the survey. This will make it even more difficult for scientists to do research on what works to reduce campus sexual violence.

Researchers in the field, including UO’s Jennifer Freyd, are working to get their universities to refuse to sign the AAU’s agreement. I hope they are successful. Their letter is here.

10/27/2014: MIT joins UO in pre-empting AAU sex assault survey monopoly

The NYT has the story, here:

In a rare, detailed look at sexual assault and harassment on a university campus, M.I.T. revealed Monday that among undergraduates who replied to a survey, at least 17 percent of women and 5 percent of men said they had been sexually assaulted.

While Mike Gottfredson and Robin Holmes did their best to stop the UO survey, it seems the MIT administration was enthusiastic – down to their General Counsel’s office. Now that would be something to see at UO! MIT webpage on the survey here. As UO’s Jennifer Freyd did here – and apparently unlike the AAU plans to do – MIT has posted the survey and methodology for free public use.

The AAU’s RFP for their Campus Climate survey is here: Looks like the AAU intends to keep the intellectual property for themselves instead of putting it in the public domain, and presumably they’ll charge non-AAU schools for using it:

All intellectual property developed related to and as a result of this project shall be retained and solely owned by AAU, with participating universities retaining ownership and control (including use for further research and/or publication) of the individual institutional data. The AAU retains the right, at its sole discretion, to utilize a different platform and/or vendor in future administrations of the survey.

Wouldn’t it be great if the researchers involved in the UO and MIT efforts could standardize the core questions, before the AAU’s high paid consultants even get started?

10/1/2014: AAU, Berdahl and Gottfredson lose survey race to Jennifer Freyd

UO journalism grad Allie Grasgreen has the full story in Politico: http://politico.pro/1mPeYaG

AAU AIMS TO HEAD OFF FEDS ON SEXUAL ASSAULT: The Association of American Universities is working to develop a campus climate survey on sexual assault in an effort to head off the prospect of a federally designed and mandated survey. The work began after a White House task force suggested the value of such a survey, but before Sen. Claire McCaskill introduced a bill that would require the Education Department to develop one for all campuses receiving federal aid. AAU President Hunter Rawlings told member institutions in May that they “want to get ahead of this issue before a federally designed survey is mandated for us.” AAU plans to hire an independent firm this month to work with campus officials and send the survey out by spring. They hope the survey will eventually be useful for non-members, too. McCaskill’s office called the idea “terrific.”

I think the operative word there is “eventually”. For those who don’t want to diddle while the AAU gets its act together, the survey developed by Professor Freyd and graduate students Marina Rosenthal and Carly Smith is already available, free and open-source, here. Preliminary results from UO are also posted there. The leaked AAU memo that Gottfredson posted by mistake is here.

I’m no psychologist, but I’d worry that any survey commissioned by administrators like Gottfredson and Berdahl would suffer from “confirmation bias” that would tend to minimize the extent of the rape problem, their ineptitude, and the extent of the institutional betrayal.

9 Comments

  1. Commentariat 10/27/2014

    Alert to UO Trustees: up your game and get some talent to Eugene, admin types who are secure with themselves and can put UO on the map. F— the AAU, kiss the Berdahl era goodbye, and get some players here who will clean house.

  2. BiCoastal 10/27/2014

    “The Oregon-MIT BiCoastal Survey on Sexual Assault”

    “Free to any campus under a Creative Commons License”

    “An open-source, open-data survey instrument evolved from two 2014 scientific, proof-of-concept campus surveys in leading universities on the U.S. East and West Coasts.”

    “Coming in revised form, January 2015.”

    “Ready to administer on your campus during winter quarter.”

    “Get results before Spring Break. Get early analyses by late April. Make needed policy changes before the end of the 2014-2015 academic year.”

    “Get smart! Get Bi — or you will just be getting by.”

    • uomatters Post author | 10/27/2014

      If you can fit the essence of this comment into a coffee cup slogan, I’ll give you one.

  3. BiCoastal 10/28/2014

    Oregon-MIT Assault Surveys: We Just Ask It

    or

    Oregon/MIT 2
    AAU 0

  4. Secret Researcher 11/18/2014

    I don’t understand why these pointy-headed professors are so upset with conducting secret research on US campuses. The Department of Defense funds secret research all the time.

    Hmmm. Maybe DoD is actually behind this . . . . .

  5. Old Man 11/18/2014

    UOM writes: “[The AAU does] a little lobbying of congress for more NSF and NIH money…” It should be noted that they also lobby Congress for more DOD money. The AAU has no policy on secret research. However, as a policy, UO does not conduct secret research (although it is allowed in the Riverfront Research Park).

  6. Keith Appleby 11/18/2014

    I didn’t see who was supposed to be conducting the survey until the Josephine Woolington article in the R-G.

    Apparently, the survey is going to be conducted by Westat, who along with RTI, NORC, and Mathematica, probably do the highest quality survey work available. Certainly, the researchers at Westat are not “anti-science” and I also personally know that they (by doing honest scientific research) sometimes end up with data and come up with conclusions that are at odds with the desired outcomes of the people and organizations funding their research. It’s quality and unbiased social science research.

    As someone who knows all these companies as well as many of the people that work at these research outfits, I would trust Westat to put forth a reliable study.

    If I were a person that really wanted to know what is going in with sexual violence on campus, then I would support the Westat study.

  7. Westat Doubter 11/18/2014

    Westat may do honest research, but are they experts in the sensitive area of how to find truths about sexual assault? Hell, I ‘m not “anti-science” either, but it doesn’t mean that I know diddly-squat about researching sexual violence, international terrorism, or black holes. The fact that the survey questions are to be kept secret and the results are to be kept secret prevents honest peer assessment of what Westat knows about how to get at the scientific truth about sexual violence.

  8. Keith Appleby 11/18/2014

    “Westat may do honest research, but are they experts in the sensitive area of how to find truths about sexual assault? ”

    Yes. They are. You have to understand, this is one of the finest social science research organizations in the world. Even their Bachelor’s level employees with a few year’s experience know more about survey design than most Ph.D.’s that I know. And, we are going to be talking about project managers who have Ph.D’s, 20+ years of experience and are widely published in the areas of gathering sensitive information.

    “The fact that the survey questions are to be kept secret and the results are to be kept secret prevents honest peer assessment of what Westat knows about how to get at the scientific truth about sexual violence.”

    I think this “secret” aspect of the questions is just spin. No one has paid Westat yet, thus obviously the questions aren’t available for review since they haven’t yet designed the instrument.

    In terms of “peer review”, it’s a private research organization, so you are going to have hundreds of the best and brightest people in the field in the country, all at Westat, looking at this before it is done.

    I worked at a similar organization in DC, Mathematica Policy Research, and we would often trade employees with Westat as people advanced through their careers. For people not familiar with the Westat “brand”, if you have an honest research question and want an honest answer to that question, then you go to Westat. If you want something other than that, then go somewhere else (a University research center?). Westat won’t compromise scientific principles for *anybody*. This is why they are so successful and counted on by countless government agencies to provide high quality data. Keep in mind, Westat does NHANES (the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) where they *literally* ask for blood as part of the survey. These people are the real deal.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *