The University is Kentucky is looking to export its campus-wide sexual assault survey to other schools in the Commonwealth. On the heels of the survey data’s release last week, the university announced it's seeking partners for a Kentucky consortium that could replicate the Campus Attitudes Toward Safety or CATS survey on the state level.
Diane Follingstad is the director of the UK Center for Research on Violence Against Women.
"If we could get more data from a wide range of colleges and universities, we could not only have a massive database, which would be amazing to work with, we could also offer this service to some schools that might not have the resources," she says.
One stumbling block could be cost – Follingstad says at least a couple new staff members would be required to run the database. Partner schools could pay $20,000 to join, though she says the cost would come down as more schools jump on board.
More than 1,000 UK students taking the mandatory CATS survey reported being sexually assaulted over the course of a year.