Project Overview

What is the discrepancy between cases of sexual assault on the Western campus and the amount of people who reach out to the WWU resources? How can WWU improve their resources and reporting processes to better serve the Western community?

 

Data-Gathering Methods

We have chosen to gather data through surveys and personal interviews. The surveys allow us to reach out to a vast about of people while providing anonymity for them to answer these possibly triggering questions with complete honesty. We also believe it is important to conduct interviews so we can provide a more personal aspect to the subject matter. Our hope is to gather data from the surveys and testimony from specific people so our project does not subject victims of sexual assault to being merely another statistic.

Link to Survey:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScS6LvXYB9fkM0rYSrPaRTjPxeUoR7IXZS52FkdV13h4T-x3w/viewform

 

Predictions

We expect to find that the majority of our respondents will find the student resources and support ineffective. We also predict that, in our interview with a past Western student, not much has changed with reporting sexual harassment compared to how it is reported today. Unfortunately, some biases may occur in our research. These might include many females not even wanting to address their experiences anonymously. Additionally, the definition of sexual harassment is very broad and some females may not even consider their experiences to go so far as to be called sexual harassment. If our data does not support our hypothesis then we will rely more heavily on our interviews, but only if we see nearly no effect from the student resources on women.

 

Poster and Results: