Abstract:

This quantitative study examines whether college students’ perceptions of campus safety differ by age and gender. The research employed a causal-comparative design and surveyed 112 students (n= 112) from one university in the United States who completed a modified version of the Campus Safety Survey (CSS) in the fall of 2024. Items on the CSS asked students to rate themselves across four dimensions of safety: Physical, Emotional, Event/Social, and Facility Usage. Approximately 57.1% (n=64) of students who completed the survey were male, 45% (n=50) graduate students, 25.0% (n=28) aged 30-34 years, and 60.7% (n=68) African American.

One-way ANOVA was conducted to investigate whether there were differences in how students perceived campus safety by age (20-24 years, 25-29 years, 30-34 years, 35-39 years, 40+ years), and a t-test was also conducted to investigate whether there was a difference in perception of campus safety by gender (male/female).

Preliminary results revealed that students aged between 20-24 years rated Physical Safety (M = 17.50, SD = 1.01) as the highest perceived level of safety, while the same age group (20-24) rated emotional safety (M = 12.82, SD = 3.43) as the lowest. Interestingly, students aged 35-39 years rated Emotional safety (M = 16.79, SD = 3.84) as the highest perceived safety. The ANOVA results revealed a significant difference in students' perceptions of physical Safety, Emotional Safety, and Facility Usage Safety (p< .05), but there was no significant difference in Event/social Safety (p>.05).

The T-test results show significant differences between males and females in Emotional safety, t(110) = 3.20, p < .05, d = 610. But there was no significant difference in Physical Event/Social Safety and Facility Usage Safety (p>.05). These findings suggest that age and gender influence specific aspects of safety perception, underscoring the importance of tailoring safety initiatives to address the concerns of diverse student age groups and genders.

Keywords:

Perception, campus safety, survey, physical safety, emotional safety.