Results of the National Student Safety Survey (2021) have been released in a ‘distressing, disappointing and confronting’ report on the prevalence of sexual harassment and sexual assault among university students in 2021.
Conducted by The Social Research Centre and funded by peak body Universities Australia – the 2021 survey builds on and extends the first survey on sexual harassment and sexual assault conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2016. Universities Australia surveyed more than 43,000 individuals, including in the NSSS report the personal stories of 1,835.
Researchers investigated the scale and nature of student experiences of sexual harassment and sexual assault across 39 Australian universities – finding that since starting university 1 in 6 people had been sexually harassed, and 1 in 20 had being sexually assaulted.