^aDepartment of Criminal Justice, One John Marshall Drive, Huntington, West Virginia 25755, USA

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the ease of locating campus safety webpages on private and public institutions of higher education websites. Second, a content analysis was conducted, if such a website existed, to determine what type of Clery Act information mandated by the U.S. Department of Education was found. With a sampling frame of 2,003 institutions obtained from the Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE), 323 schools were sampled; of those, 234 had campus safety websites and 131 referenced the Clery Act. It took an average of two "clicks" to navigate from a university homepage to a campus safety website. The results suggest many campus safety websites post information related to crime statistics and emergency contacts, but are less likely to contain information about crime alerts and emergency plans/procedures. Campus safety and university administrators and webpage designers should consider making this information more easily retrievable on a homepage.