HEDS Sexual Assault Campus Climate Surveys
The HEDS Sexual Assault Campus Climate Surveys have been updated for 2025-2026. HEDS offers three different campus climate surveys on sexual assault and sexual violence–one for undergraduate students, one for advanced degree students, and one for faculty, staff, and administrators.
HEDS Sexual Assault Campus Climate Survey for Undergraduates
In this survey, which should take no more than 10 minutes to complete, your undergraduate students are asked about:
- their perceptions of your campus’s climate;
- their perceptions of how your institution responds to sexual assaults; and
- whether they have experienced unwanted sexual contact or sexual assault.
HEDS Campus Sexual Violence Surveys
The HEDS Campus Sexual Violence Surveys for your graduate students and employees are now pulse surveys that will take 5 minutes or less to complete.
Advanced Degree Student Survey
- Graduate students are asked about their perceptions of how your institution responds to incidents of sexual violence; its educational programming about sexual violence; and whether they have experienced sexual violence while a graduate student at your institution.
Faculty and Staff Survey
- Employees are asked about their perceptions of how your institution addresses and responds to incidents of sexual violence; whether they understand the institutional reporting procedures; and whether they have experienced sexual violence while employed at your institution.
The surveys may be administered together or individually. Administering all three surveys will provide a fuller picture of your campus climate around sexual assault and sexual violence. If you have state-specific requirements we will work with you to meet them. If your institution is in the state of New York, we have an existing module you can add at no cost, so that the survey satisfies the requirements of the State of New York Senate Bill S5965.
Due to the surveys’ sensitive subject matter, responses for all three surveys are anonymous, and the surveys can only be administered to those 18 years of age and older. All three surveys are designed for people who spend a significant amount of time on campus, not for online students or for employees who work remotely.
About the 2025-2026 Changes
With the overall trend of survey response rates declining, we have made these surveys shorter and less complex to reduce the chance of dropout. We closely analyzed data from past years to guide our revisions. This document outlines all the changes to our undergraduate survey. You can also find more background about these changes in our information sheet by clicking on the “Survey Options, Policies, and Fees (PDF)” button found in the Downloads section of this webpage. This document also details all the survey options available to you, as well as our expectations, practices, fees, and terms of service.
Click on the following questions to learn more.
You can administer these surveys for any 3–6 week period between October 13, 2025, and May 29, 2026.
Please be aware that you must register at least seven weeks (35 business days) prior to the date on which you plan to begin administering the survey. The last day to register for a 2025-2026 administration is March 20, 2026.
Live updates:
- We provide ongoing updates while your survey is open to give you a first look at select, high-level data from the survey. These updates will give you an early, overall sense of how people responded to parts of the survey, and they allow you to gauge your response rates so you can adjust your communication strategies if necessary.
Unit-record survey data:
- You will receive your institution’s unit-record survey data in both SPSS and Microsoft Excel files.
- The open-ended survey responses on the undergraduate survey will be shared in a separate file.
- To protect the anonymity of your respondents, we remove all personally identifying information from your data files and review the open-ended responses thoroughly before sending them to you.
- Given the sensitive nature of the data from these surveys, your institution must accept our secure data handling agreements as outlined in the registration form and the survey’s information sheet in order to receive a data file. We also encourage you to work with your institutional review board (IRB) to help assure your campus constituencies that your institution is treating the survey data and findings appropriately.
Comparative report:
- This report compares the responses of your respondents (i.e., undergraduate students, advanced degree students, or faculty and staff) to the same respondents at all other participating institutions.
- As this report include comparisons to other participating institutions, we cannot begin working on them until after the survey window closes at the end of May. We will send this report in late summer/early fall 2026.
YES! Here’s how:
- We insert your institution’s name at the top of each page of the survey and in the text of applicable questions
- You can customize the survey invitations and reminders
- You can add custom, institution-specific questions at the end of the survey
While you can add supplemental questions to the end, we do not modify our survey questions or response options. In order for us to offer the benefit of comparative data between participating institutions in our survey reports, the questions and response options have to be the same across all the colleges and universities using the survey.
Sexual Assault Campus Climate Survey for Undergraduates:
- Survey base cost – $2,500
- Survey base cost for HEDS members – $650
These prices include up to 10 supplemental closed-ended questions. There are some custom options for additional fees.
Campus Sexual Violence Surveys (Advance Degree Students or Faculty and Staff)
- Survey base cost (each)– $650
- Survey base cost (each) for HEDS members – $350
You may add up to 5 supplemental closed-ended questions to either of these surveys at no additional cost.
You will find all survey options and fees in the survey information sheet. Please click on the “Survey Options, Policies, and Fees (PDF)” button in the Downloads section of this webpage.
To learn more about becoming a HEDS member, please visit our Join HEDS page.
Laura Palucki Blake, Harvey Mudd College
“The results of our HEDS Sexual Assault Campus Climate Survey have helped us organize our efforts and focus attention around three major findings: education and outreach, the importance of susceptible situations and the experiences of susceptible populations.”
Contact at HEDS Member Institution
“The HEDS Sexual Assault Campus Climate Survey helped our institution tell its story about the sexual assault climate. Moreover, it provided us with a baseline as well as allowed us to compare ourselves with other liberal arts colleges. It helped us dispel certain myths, and helped us identify areas we need to improve on.”
Erika Farfan, Kenyon College
“Kenyon first used the HEDS survey in 2015 to get a basic understanding of our campus climate around sexual misconduct. We hadn’t investigated sexual violence and harassment on our campus to such an extent and were in the midst of a Title IX policy change. We shared the results widely on our campus to help support transparent conversations about out campus culture. Two years later we’re hoping to get some data about the effectiveness of our previous policy changes and further support some of the difficult conversations that our students and employees have been having around sexual violence.”
Ellenor Anderbyrne, Beloit College
“The results of the HEDS Sexual Assault Survey drove the agenda for a senior capstone course that focused on how to improve the campus climate and reduce sexual assaults at Beloit College. The students in the course studied and analyzed the data, researched solutions, and created a prioritized agenda, which the college is now putting into action. For example, based on the recommendations of the capstone students, the college has put into a place a support group for students who have experienced sexual victimization.”
If you have any questions, please email us at SexualAssaultSurvey@hedsconsortium.org, and we will get back to you right away.
Downloads