Student guide to harassment and sexual misconduct

We are asking all final year students across England to complete a pilot survey on sexual misconduct in higher education. 

You will be asked to complete the sexual misconduct survey after you have submitted your response to the National Student Survey (NSS). Your responses to both surveys will be anonymous.

Although they share the same survey platform, the two surveys are entirely separate.

The surveys will be available until 30 April 2025.

Why are we doing this?

There is currently limited data on sexual misconduct affecting students in higher education in England.

We ran a similar pilot survey in 2023 with a small number of universities. By surveying students on a national scale, we hope to:

• understand the prevalence of sexual misconduct experienced by students
• gain insight on how and where interventions might be targeted to tackle sexual misconduct
• test an approach to capturing prevalence data at a national level.

What will I be asked? 

The survey will ask you about your experiences of sexual misconduct while at university or college.

It will also explore your awareness and experiences of the reporting mechanisms that your university or college might have in place.

We know that the survey content may be distressing for some students, and we have taken great care to ensure the questions are designed to limit this as much as possible. We carefully considered research ethics and consulted with students to test the comprehension and readability of the questions, as well as their suitability for a wide audience.

The survey will explore sensitive subjects and the language in some of the questions is deliberately explicit. It's important that the questions are asked in this way so you are clear about what we mean and you can identify the types of behaviours or incidents that may have affected you. These explicit questions are much more likely to provide an accurate picture of the prevalence of forms of sexual misconduct, and so reduce the risk of understating the scale of the issue.

You'll be able to skip any questions or sections you don't wish to answer, or stop at any time.

How will my data be used?

Personal data for the sexual misconduct survey will be drawn from the NSS data collection and used to invite you to take part in this online survey.

Ipsos will securely share survey responses in a way that individuals cannot be directly identified. In all data processing we will take measures to protect your confidentiality.

You will not be identifiable in any results which are published or shared with universities or colleges.

Full details are available in our privacy notice, available under 'student surveys'.

What support will be available for me?

Our help and support page lists national organisations and charities that may be able to support you if you have experienced sexual misconduct.

The survey will also provide links to services you can access and details of any support your university or college has available for you.