Moderated by: Michele Decker

Presentation 1: "Climate Survey Approaches for Collecting Accurate, Reliable Sexual Harassment Prevalence Numbers: A New Resource from the Action Collaborative" by Mariam Lam

• Measuring the prevalence of sexual harassment on a campus can be achieved by collecting population-based data in the form of a large-scale survey. The ability for such a survey to do so accurately, however, depends on many factors, such as whether the questions it contains have been tested to determine whether participants understand and interpret them as intended. This session will briefly introduce a research-based guide that provides key considerations for each step in the climate assessment process, recently published by the Evaluation Working Group of the Action Collaborative.

Presentation 2: "A Comprehensive Approach to Assessing Climate and Culture: The We Are NOAA Workplace Culture Survey" by Jane Stapleton and Kelley Bonner

• Climate and culture surveys can help institutions of higher education and workplaces to understand the extent of sexual assault, sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination within their organization.  However, culture change requires more than documenting the problems. Climate and culture surveys must also document individual and organizational strengths, as well as uncover social norms that will support culture change. Institutions must use this comprehensive data to inform prevention and response strategies and policy solutions. Additionally, organizations must share findings with community members to demonstrate transparency and a commitment to culture change.  
  Using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) and Soteria Solutions' experience in implementing the We Are NOAA Workplace Culture Survey (We Are NOAA Survey), we will present a case example of how we are using the We Are NOAA survey to: 
  • assess what may be healthy and what may be unhealthy across the different NOAA workplace environments and for specific identity groups;
  • determine the role of colleagues, supervisors and senior leaders in terms of inhibiting or disinhibiting these problems; 
  • identify problem and risk-areas within organization and at different level of the organization in relation to demographic and identity characteristics; and
  • generate information that can be incorporated into activities designed to reduce and prevent these problems.  
• This thorough assessment of NOAA's workplace environment will provide insights about strengths and assets as well as of problematic cultural behaviors and patterns. The survey will generate data that can be incorporated into prevention activities with the goal of producing outcomes desired by NOAA, i.e. a healthy workplace in which everyone – regardless of identity or experience– is encouraged to perform to their fullest potential, is empowered to report and to address problems that they encounter, and in which they feel supported to do so.  
• In the presentation, we will highlight how to engage community members in survey development, participant recruitment, and reporting findings. Particular attention will focus on leveraging input from community members to create a culture survey that measures incidence and prevalence of sexual assault and sexual harassment (SASH) and other inappropriate behaviors (racism, homophobia, overly harsh supervision, unwanted attention, unfair judgements, etc.), as well as experiences as a bystander and social norms that support prevention. The presenters will discuss the importance of investigating the intersections of SASH and identity-based harassment and assault and the strategies that we employed to ensure that we were measuring the diversity of experiences among NOAA employees. 
  This presentation builds upon the Action Collaborative' s Evaluation Working Group's work on "guidance on conducting campus climate surveys; guidance on how to analyze data from campus climate surveys; guidelines or a framework for producing public reports; guidance on quantitative and qualitative methods for measuring progress; approaches for increasing transparency and/or public release of climate survey results; and systems for monitoring the climate on campus that do not rely on formal reports and investigations."  The target audiences for this presentation include administrators, evaluators, policy, prevention and response personnel who are part of a comprehensive effort to assess culture and climate and use data to inform effective solutions.