sexual harassment and build on work by individual universities in this area.

The Respect. Now. Always. initiative has three clear aims:

-raise awareness of sexual assault and sexual harassment and lift the visibility of support services for students;

-obtain data to guide further improvement in university policies and services; and

-assist universities in sharing best practice resources across the sector.

As part of this initiative, the university sector funded the Australian Human Rights Commission to conduct a national prevalence survey of university students.

September 2016 to November 2016: students across the 39 universities were asked to participate in the survey, with the survey running at different times at each institution during this period.

31 July 2017: A national interim support line is made available for university students who have experienced sexual assault or sexual harassment.

1August 2017: The Australian Human Rights Commission released the national report with the survey results and recommendations on areas for university action.

Was there ethics approval for the survey?

This project had two parts: the first was a national prevalence survey to provide quantitative data on the nature and scale of sexual assault and harassment. The second was an open submissions page on the Australian Human Rights Commission’s website that enabled anyone to share their experiences. This process was run by the Commission.

The national prevalence survey received ethics approval from the University of New South Wales Human Research Ethics Committee in August 2016.

The Commission has stated that for the open submissions page: “Ethics approval is required in relation to research. The information provided in submissions is not research in the