Methodology & Data Sources

How PlainCampus combines federal Clery Act and IPEDS records, computes comparisons, and states their limits.

Data Sources

PlainCampus aggregates data from two official U.S. federal government databases:

  • OPE Campus Safety Survey (Clery Act) - The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Postsecondary Education collects annual campus crime, disciplinary action, and reported enrollment data from Title IV-participating institutions, plus fire-safety data where residential facilities make it applicable. Source: ope.ed.gov/campussafety
  • IPEDS Institutional Data - The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System supplies institutional type, control (public/private/for-profit), and location. Source: nces.ed.gov/ipeds
  • Clery Act Compliance Reporting - Each institution publishes an Annual Security Report (ASR) following Department of Education guidelines under ED.gov campus safety guidance. Underlying offense classifications align with the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program.

Two supplementary datasets appear elsewhere on the site, each cited inline where shown:

  • DOE Clery Act Enforcement Actions (/enforcement) - A curated, non-exhaustive list of major, publicly documented Department of Education enforcement determinations and fines, compiled from DOE press releases and Final Program Review Determinations. This is not a live-fetched federal dataset; it is manually curated and may not include every enforcement action.

Academic and financial profile figures shown on school pages (admissions, cost, and outcomes) are drawn from the Department of Education College Scorecard extract (IPEDS, NSLDS, and Treasury/IRS earnings records), joined on the same institutional UnitID as the Clery tables.

How We Process the Data

  1. Download annual OPE Campus Safety Survey data and IPEDS institutional profiles
  2. Match OPE records to IPEDS profiles by converting each OPE UNITID_P campus identifier to its parent federal UnitID
  3. Parse crime statistics by category, location type (on-campus, residential, public property, non-campus), and year
  4. Parse fire safety data for residential facilities
  5. Use enrollment reported in the OPE survey cohort to calculate per-1,000-student normalized metrics
  6. Compute safety scores and rankings
  7. Load into our search-optimized database

Safety Score Calculation

Our safety score is the total number of on-campus Criminal Offenses and VAWA reports divided by enrollment, expressed per 1,000 enrolled students. Criminal Offenses include murder, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and arson; VAWA reports include dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking. Arrests, disciplinary referrals, hate-crime duplicate counts, fire records, public-property reports, and noncampus reports are not included in this composite.

Dividing by enrollment makes the score size-adjusted: a large university naturally has more opportunities for reports than a small college. A lower score means fewer included reports relative to enrollment, not lower personal risk. The denominator is not exposure-adjusted, so online, commuter, and residential mix, time spent on campus, reporting culture, and Clery geography still matter. Included categories are summed without subjective weighting.

Data Currency

The Department of Education releases new OPE Campus Safety Survey data annually, typically in the fall. Crime statistics are reported with a 1–2 year lag from the survey year. We update our database when new annual data is published.

Critical Limitations

  • Clery data only covers crimes reported to campus security or local law enforcement, unreported crimes are not included
  • Campus reporting practices vary significantly, lower numbers may reflect underreporting, not a safer campus
  • Only covers Clery-defined geographic areas; crimes occurring off-campus beyond defined boundaries are excluded
  • Use this data as one factor among many when evaluating a school

How the Source Agencies Collect Data

The Clery Act requires all Title IV-participating institutions to collect and report campus crime statistics annually to the Department of Education. Campus police or security departments maintain a daily crime log and report incidents occurring on campus, in campus-affiliated residential facilities, on public property immediately adjacent to campus, and at non-campus buildings owned or controlled by the institution. Institutions must also request crime statistics from local law enforcement agencies for the same geographic areas.

IPEDS data is collected through annual mandatory surveys administered by NCES to every postsecondary institution that participates in federal financial aid programs. Institutions report enrollment counts, institutional characteristics, financial data, and staffing levels through the IPEDS Data Collection System.

Data Accuracy Commitment

PlainCampus presents federal data without modification. Crime counts, enrollment figures, and safety scores are computed directly from the published OPE and IPEDS datasets. We do not estimate unreported crimes, adjust for underreporting, or editorialize about institutional safety. If you find any data that appears incorrect, please contact us and we will verify against the source data.

Bulk Download

A free CSV extract of institution-level safety fields (UnitID, enrollment, safety score, ranks, incident totals) is available at /api/dataset/institutions?format=csv, the same distribution linked from the homepage Dataset markup. Cite or reuse with attribution; underlying OPE/IPEDS fields remain public-domain federal data.

Contact

Questions about our methodology or found a data error? Reach us at hello@plaincampus.com or through our contact page.