Conducting a student climate survey on sexual misconduct can have many benefits to institutions of higher education. Climate survey data can help schools develop prevention programs, allocate victims’ assistance resources, and modify policies in a data-informed way, based on the actual experiences and opinions of students. However, to be meaningful, the data must reflect the entire student body at a given school. Many schools have found that only a small proportion of students who are invited to take the survey actually do so. Low response rates are the biggest challenge to climate surveys and often make it difficult to have confidence in the data. When very few students participate in a survey, it raises concerns that the data may not be representative; in other words, students with certain characteristics (e.g., women, freshmen) or experiences (e.g., a history of sexual violence victimization, involvement in advocacy efforts) may be more likely to take the survey than others. Schools would not feel comfortable making important decisions that affect all students based on data from small or biased samples. Therefore, schools interested in conducting climate surveys need to plan carefully to maximize response rates and ensure sample representativeness
