At Learning Courage, we believe that it is important for your school to be proactive about understanding the climate of your school as it relates to sexual behavior. The best way to do this is to conduct a climate survey. There are different types of climate surveys available to understand various aspects of your school. We believe that a climate survey focused on the topic of sexual attitudes and behaviors is an essential tool for collecting both quantitative and qualitative data about what is really happening within the community at your school.  Another critical data point relates to the culture of the school since the attitudes and behaviors of students are closely tied to the culture.

With this data, you can identify any gaps or challenges your school may need to tackle. These surveys can also provide information about how your policies and procedures are being followed -and if there are any gaps between your protocols and what is actually occurring at your school. Conducting surveys periodically also allows your school to assess information about the climate over time and measure your progress towards your objectives. 

Learning Courage is currently in the process of vetting several of the existing survey tools used in schools today. While there are several survey tools currently available, we believe that the tools either need to include more questions about sexual attitudes and behaviors or to be focused exclusively on questions related to this topic.     

How students think and talk about gender identity and gender expression and also sexual orientation and expression continues to evolve  These issues relate directly to attitudes and behaviors.  The more you know about how your students are thinking about these social expressions, the better able you are support the needs of your students while also understand if members of the community may be at risk, whether due to their gender, sex, race, class, religion, or other identities.  

Developing and delivering a survey tool is on our list of priorities for this year. Our tool will be specific to sexual attitudes and behaviors and has different modules for different age groups to ensure the surveys are age-appropriate.