Lessons Learned in Creating a College Consortium

This paper offers lessons learned in evaluating the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (2013) requirement that colleges receiving Title IX funds provide bystander programming to reduce sexual violence. To conduct this evaluation a national college consortium was created [multi college bystander efficacy evaluation (mcBEE)]. Through this consortium 24 public colleges were recruited and their choices regarding bystander programming options were queried. Concurrently, rates of violence perpetration and victimization were measured over 4 years among undergraduate students at each college. Description and details of experiences in recruiting colleges into a college consortium, addressing regulatory compliance, approaches to selecting and launching college-wide surveys to undergraduate students across several large campuses, and strategies to communicate findings and data back to each recruited campus are presented. Suggestions for future consortium building include budgeting sufficient time to recruit colleges, manage regulatory processes, and ensure adequate response rates through short surveys and enticing incentives. In building a national consortium, lessons such as flexibility, networking, and communication contributed to mcBEE’s success.