The 2018 Sexual Harassment of Women report suggests that “[a]cademic institutions should work with researchers to evaluate and assess their efforts to create a more diverse, inclusive, and respectful environment, and to create effective policies, procedures, and training programs” and “[e]valuation should be routinely expected as one of the components of the intervention, not as an additional burden.” Although evaluation is an important component of all research, it is particularly so in interventions addressing sexual harassment; despite this, few studies evaluating prevention efforts, response efforts, or any policies or procedures have been undertaken.

Individuals from the Evaluation Working Group within the Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education will examine practices and key considerations related to implementing evaluations of sexual harassment interventions, as well as the specific methods used. In addition to reviewing relevant research articles and case studies, individuals from the Evaluation Working Group will also review federal and state-level legislation to assess the context around these efforts. The Evaluation Working Group will focus on three distinct but interrelated areas:

• The purpose and principles of evaluating interventions. This section will describe the role of evaluation in the context of sexual harassment prevention and response, as many campus administrators who are responsible for programming and data collection do not have a robust background in evaluation work. This section may provide an introduction to concepts such as evaluation questions, target audiences, feasibility, and resource availability and how they relate to sexual harassment evaluation.
• Specific Methods. This section will detail a subset of potential methods and resources needed to rigorously evaluate different types of interventions, articulate potential goals and objectives for each evaluation method, and provide concrete examples of interventions and their assessment.
• Additional considerations. This section will present examples of legal and ethical considerations related to the evaluation of sexual harassment interventions, as well as explore complementary concepts such as creating a culture of feedback, data ecosystems, and data teams.

Using the information gathered, individuals from the Evaluation Working Group will produce a paper that serves as a resource for higher education administrators and leadership to explore methods and approaches to evaluating interventions designed to prevent and respond to sexual harassment in higher education. With an improved understanding of how different methods and tools are used in the realm of sexual harassment evaluation, institutions of higher education can select the most appropriate method or tool for their own evaluation goals.

The goal of this resource is to build upon information within the National Academies’ 2018 report on Sexual Harassment of Women by providing more specific information related evaluation methods and tools. It will also complement the Evaluation Working Group’s Guidance for Measuring Sexual Harassment Prevalence Using Campus Climate Surveys by exploring the role of surveys in sexual harassment evaluation efforts generally, as well as contextualizing it as one of many tools that may or may not be useful and appropriate for the goals of any particular campus. Furthermore, the paper will build upon the information gathered from previously published Evaluating the Effectiveness of Interventions to Prevent and Address Sexual Harassment: Proceedings of a Workshop.