Perception of Professional Boundaries and Experiences of Misconduct among Different Demographic Groups Within Higher Education in the UK, 2017-2018

The data contain questions measuring: student perceptions of professional boundaries, experiences of misconduct by HE staff on students, gender and occupation of perpetrators, the effect of experiencing conduct, responses to misconduct, reporting behaviours and demographic questions.<p>This project explores the professional boundaries between staff and students within higher education. An online survey of NUS extra card holders yielded a final sample of 1,492 students. Exploratory factor analysis identified two factors: Comfort with personalised interaction and comfort with sexualised interactions. Demographic analysis indicates that generally females and home students were substantially less comfortable with personal or sexualised interactions compared to male and international students. Black and Asian student also report feeling less comfortable with personalised interactions than white students however, this difference is not found within sexualised interactions. Generally the majority of students report feeling neutral or uncomfortable with the majority of personalised interactions with staff and report feeling uncomfortable or very uncomfortable with sexualised interactions. These results call into question existing policy frameworks with HE and provide an evidence base for institutions and policy makers to consider professional boundary frameworks more in line with students expectations.</p>