METHODOLOGY
The survey was conducted through Survey Monkey, with the link distributed primarily through the IAHSS and IAHSS Foundation contact lists, as well as publication by Campus Safety on its website at www.campussafetymagazine.com and in emails to its subscribers. All submissions are kept confidential, and only aggregate data is reported.
To encourage participation, a $250 Amazon gift card was offered to a randomly selected respondent.
The received data were vetted by the IAHSS Foundation Board of Directors, with incomplete and apparently fraudulent responses discarded.
LIMITATIONS
There were several limitations associated with the 2021 Crime Survey, including, but not necessarily limited to, the following.
First, 269 responses leaves more than 95 percent of hospitals in the United States unaccounted for. Respondents were a self-selected group, and it is possible that they are not a representative sample of the nation’s hospitals.
Second, since responses were for individual hospitals, some hospital systems were represented multiple times. In the most extreme case, 39 responses came from one system, representing nearly 15 percent of all respondents.
Third, the use of bed counts may not be the best indicator of hospital size and population. For example, the number of Emergency Department visits, number of employees, hospital square footage, average daily census, and adjusted patient days can also be used to calculate crime rates. Bed counts, however, were the most consistently reported indicator of size and/or population and allow for continuity with previous Crime Surveys.