Limited nationwide data hinder a comprehensive understanding of the prevalence and costs of workplace sexual harassment. According to GAO's analysis of available federal data and literature review, the few reliable nationwide estimates of sexual harassment's prevalence vary substantially due to differences in methodology, including the question structure and time period the survey used. Moreover,

Our review of 15 selected state accountability systems—used to assess all types of schools—found that all 15 include at least one indicator that research organizations and relevant studies considered useful in capturing alternative school achievement. For example: (1) Eleven of the fifteen states use college and career readiness indicators. These indicators may capture achievements (e.g., ind

The Department of Education's (Education) quality control processes for data it collects from public school districts on incidents of restraint and seclusion are largely ineffective or do not exist, according to GAO's analysis of school year 2015-16 federal restraint and seclusion data—the most recent available. Specifically, Education's data quality control processes were insufficient to detec

Data from the Departments of Education (Education) and Justice (DOJ) show an increasing number of reported religious-based hate crimes on college campuses during the past decade. While these agencies collect slightly different data, crimes reported to Education have increased from 103 in 2009 to 189 in 2017, and crimes reported to DOJ increased from 24 to 59. These trends were largely driven by i

Most of the 16 agencies that are members of the interagency working group on environmental justice—created by Executive Order 12898 in 1994—reported taking some actions to identify and address environmental justice issues, such as creating data tools, developing policies or guidance, and building community capacity through small grants and training. For example, the Environmental Protection A

The military services collect gender information, but they do not collect and maintain consistent information about race and ethnicity in their investigations, military justice, and personnel databases. This limits their ability to collectively or comparatively assess these data to identify any disparities (i.e., instances in which a racial, ethnic, or gender group was overrepresented) in the mil

The two databases maintained by the Department of the Interior's (Interior) Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) include some data fields useful for identifying tribal roads eligible for federal funding, but other fields may be too inaccurate to be useful for performance reporting and oversight. Specifically, the National Tribal Transportation Facility Inventory (NTTFI) provides useful data for identif

Three of the six federal grant-making agencies we reviewed that support research in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields--the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Agriculture-National Institute of Food and Agriculture--routinely collect demographic information about the individual researchers who apply for and receive federal gr

On the basis of analyzing Social Security Administration (SSA) data on individuals who were Disability Insurance (DI) beneficiaries as of December 2010 and earnings data from the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH), GAO estimates that SSA made $1.29 billion in potential cash benefit overpayments to about 36,000 individuals as of January 2013. The exact number of individuals who received improp

GAO identified four methods the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), within the U.S. Department of Transportation, uses to assure that recipients of federal transit funding comply with civil rights requirements: 1) requiring recipients to self-certify that they assure compliance with applicable civil rights requirements; 2) issuing guidance to inform recipients of their responsibilities; 3) admi