The Clery Act's transparency purpose & campus sexual misconduct: A longitudinal analysis.

Objective: Campus sexual misconduct causes adverse physical, mental, behavioral, reproductive, and financial consequences. Informing prevention efforts at federal, state, and institution levels requires valid data. We assessed the appropriateness of Clery Act Campus Crime Statistics data for evaluating campus sexual misconduct. Participants: We sampled 40 institutions within the American Association of Universities (AAU) from 2014 to 2020. Methods: We determined annual differences between rates of sexual misconduct reported in public Clery Act data and those reported by institutional Title IX coordinator offices (which are not required to be public). Results: Clery Act data offer a considerable undercount relative to Title IX Office sexual misconduct data. The magnitude of the differences was similar in both the institutions that published Title IX data and those that did not. Conclusions: Clery Act data are not appropriate for evaluating campus sexual misconduct, necessitating policy steps that require standardization and publication of Title IX Office data.