Take Part in the SAFEDUC Research, a Study on Gender-Based Violence and Student Life at Sciences Po and Université Paris Cité

Victor: My name is Victor and I am a sociologist. I finished my PhD a few months ago. My PhD thesis was about breakups and how individuals manage breakups depending on their gender, when you work on that topic, you necessarily come across experiences of gender-based violence. When I was finishing writing it, I came across an offer for a postdoc job on the project. As I was used to working with numbers and interested in getting deep into how you produce a survey, I applied.

Clara: I am Clara and I just finished my master’s studies. I studied engineering statistics and did a degree in quantitative sociology. My master's thesis was about the #MeToo movement and online testimonies about gender-based violence. I studied the testimonies using quantitative methods and natural language processing. I was further interested in sociology and the quantitative approach of studying violence as I think about doing a PhD and continuing research. This was a good opportunity to learn more about the topic and the methods.

Victor: The research will be conducted among students via an online questionnaire in two important institutions with around 82,000 students in total. In the best case scenario, every single student from both Sciences Po and UPCité, from the first year to PhD candidates, would participate. The questionnaire is also for people who have no experience of gender-based violence. So if you come across the questionnaire, please, give us 10 minutes of your time, no matter if you feel that you are or are not the target of the study. Also, by participating you can help your institution to better understand how to support people that are facing such violence. One of the goals of the questionnaire is to identify the context in which violence emerges. Knowing also where it doesn't emerge and who is not a target is a huge part of it!

Clara: Yes, the idea is to represent a broader student life experience. Gender-based violence can be a part of that experience for some people, but there are other topics that we want to talk about. For instance, the day-to-day atmosphere, how people live their student life, if they participate in events, where they live, if they have a job. Everything about their life experience is important for us to really get a representative portrait of the students’ life now. We also met some students and some associations on different campuses, like in Menton and Paris. This helped us build a cohesive questionnaire. If we manage to get a high response rate, the study has the potential to be strongly representative. 

Clara: There are a few ways. Every student will receive an email from the research team inviting them to participate. The invitation also includes documents explaining the project, our protocol on a data protection and the overall context. In the email, you will also receive a link which will lead you to the survey and through which you will need to authenticate. This ensures that only students from the two institutions participate but it will never be used to identify any participant. Another way will be through scanning the QR codes that will be distributed around the schools on posters and eventually on social media and on the schools’ website. Also once you start the survey, you can always stop and get back to it later.

Victor: We got a lot of inspiration from previous studies. Even though they are not so numerous, we have a couple good quality surveys in France. On the national level, the most obvious example is the Virage survey from the National Institute for Demographic Studies (Ined). The survey took place in 2015 so the data is getting a little old now. But we also have  fresh inspiration coming from Western France. Nantes Université did an interesting survey last year. Besides, we should thank the team from Nantes because they helped us a lot in the process of creating our survey! They were really open to sharing  all the information regarding their survey, so that's a prime example of scientific cooperation. On the European level, I think the most obvious inspiration is the UniSAFE project, which helped to understand the basic shared questions in such surveys.

Victor: I would say that the main topic is in which context gender-based violence occurs and what are its consequences. We use  a very broad definition of violence. The survey starts asking about experiences on a psychological level, a physical level and then a sexual level. But, as said before, we also ask questions about student life in general. There are also questions we are not asking, for instance, we do not focus on questions about witnessing violence perpetrated on others, or about personal experience of being the author of violence. These questions are also important, but every survey has to make choices and our main goal is to understand the context of violence and its consequences. We really try to stick to that perspective of the victim.

Clara: Also, some surveys ask questions about both student life and personal life, if people experienced violence in their childhood for instance. We do not ask that. We focus on what happens in classes, at campuses, but also at parties or at events organised by the school or by students. Not only that, but we also focus more specifically on the past 12 months so people may recover their memories easily. The consequences are a big part of the survey. We want to know if and how negative experiences affect students’ academic, personal and social life or health.

Clara: There are two things about safety. First, it is solely a research survey, so we do not take over the sexual and gender-based violence office’s role. For that reason, we do not leave blank space for students to write to us in the questionnaire. Yet, it is important that every participant feels safe while answering the survey. Therefore, a link is present throughout the questionnaire which leads to a document where you can find helpful resources if you have questions about the topic of gender-based violence or in case anything makes you uncomfortable. It also includes links through which you may report a problem if you want to. We also included outside-of-the-school resources, national contacts, anonymous contacts or contacts if you need some psychological or legal help.

The second thing is, as said before, we do ask people to authenticate to secure the survey and ensure the quality of the sample. This authenticator will not allow the team to identify individuals, we won’t know “who answered what”, it is only used to make sure only students of Sciences Po and UPCité can participate. The whole process is monitored by the Data Protection Officers and the legal teams of UPCité and Sciences Po, in order to make sure that confidentiality [and anonymity] is ensured and is compliant with the law. 

Victor: The survey is going to be deployed before the end of the spring semester. We will then have time during the summer and the beginning of next academic year to work on the results. In any case, we will publish the first results at the beginning of 2025.

Clara: I think I learnt a lot from this project. At first, I was interested in building a survey because during my studies I used to study results, and you often do not know how the data has been created. So now it's interesting to be in the whole process, to really think about what is the goal, how we choose questions and then study the results. Also, as we're working  with two big institutions, we work with a large scientific committee, data protection officers, legal teams, etc. We meet a lot of people from both research and administrative teams and we learn a lot about how to do well thought-out and ethical research among students. Also, as I studied in an engineering school, I now also enjoy working with sociologists and economists. This project provides me with knowledge on how to produce data and do research in real life.

Victor: For me, it’s very much the same. Before this project, I was working on data that was already there. As Clara said, we worked on the questionnaire for a couple of months and the rest was logistics. You've got all those questions you have to solve that you don't have in mind when you're working on a database that was produced by other people. For instance, yes, we are going to reach students by their emails, but how do you send an email to 82,000 people? Or yes, let's use an authentication system, but how do you use an authentication system that is in accordance with GDPR? This is not for other people to solve, you have to find the solution. That's really challenging also because we're working with two institutions. But I must say that it's really great satisfaction when you find the solution. You've got this saying, I think in military sciences, that amateurs talk tactics whereas professionals talk logistics. I would perhaps say amateurs study statistics and professionals study logistics. Basically, we are learning to be professionals on this project.