Sexual harassment is defined as a range of unwanted verbal, non-verbal and physical acts of a sexual nature directed towards another person. Through my thesis I wanted to explore the impact of sexual harassment trainings on the perception of different acts as sexual harassment. I conducted interviews with three professionals to see how many levels of severity of sexual harassment can be distinguished. These categories were used to create the first version of the Sexual Harassment Severity Questionnaire (SHSQ).
In the second part of the thesis, I empirically tested the resulting levels of sexual harassment severity. I found that a three-factor model with 40 items and three levels of sexual harassment severity (i.e., acts that are not sexual harassment, more severe acts and very severe acts) was the most appropriate. Finally, I investigated the impact of sexual harassment training on the perception of different acts as sexual harassment. 95 participants took part in the trainings. 36 participants (38% of the total) attended the sexual harassment workshop, 32 participants (34% of the total) attended the sexual harassment lecture, and 27 participants (28% of the total) attended the time management workshop. The SHSQ was administered before and after the participants took part in one of the trainings. I examined changes in the mean scores at the three levels of sexual harassment severity. I predicted that in the acts that are not sexual harrasment, training would lead to a decrease in the average score of the participants in the workshop and lecture on sexual harassment. For the scale of more and very severe acts, I predicted an increase in the average score for participants in the workshop and lecture on sexual harassment after the training. I did not assume any changes in the participants of the time management workshop. There were no statistically significant changes in any of the groups. I was interested to see whether personality traits (Big Five and Dark Triad), gender and age could be used to predict participants' scores on the factors of SHSQ. No single trait emerged as a significant predictor for all factors.
|