Sexual violence against female students on university campuses in the United States has reached “epidemic levels,” and interventions to reduce it are urgently needed, according to a new study.

Nearly one in five college women at one US university reported incidents of rape or attempted rape during their first year at the institution, according to a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The survey, conducted at a large unnamed private university in the state of New York, found that 19 percent of women there suffered some form of rape either by force or while they were incapacitated due to alcohol or drugs.

More than 15 percent of the respondents reported a rape or attempted rape during the first two semesters.

"If you swap in any other physically harmful and psychologically harmful event, a prevalence of 15 percent would be just unacceptably high," Kate Carey, professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University School of Public Health and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

"If, for instance, 15 percent of our young people were breaking their legs in their first year of school, we would expect that the community would do something to enhance the safety of the environment."

The study said that estimates that distinguish between incidents of "forcible rape" and rape that occurred when alcohol or other drugs are used suggested that so-called "incapacitated rape" is more prevalent than forcible.

Researchers also looked back at past experiences of polled students and found that 37 percent of the women said they had experienced at least one rape or attempted rape between the age of 14 and their second year of college.

College students in the United States reported nearly 5,000 forcible sex offenses in 2012, according to US Department of Education data.

Yet, a US Justice Department report estimated that less than 5 percent of rape victims attending college report their attack.

The percentage of female students who suffered sexual violence at the unnamed university resembles sexual assault figures in the overall general population.

The results from a 2011 survey by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which were released last year, indicate that an estimated 19.3 percent of women have been raped and 43.9 percent have suffered sexual violence at one point in their lives.

AHT/HRJ