The effects of awareness training on attitudes toward sexual harassment

Keywords

Awareness-training video intervention, Attitude-scale assessment, Gender differences in harassment perceptions, Workplace harassment prevalence, Writing-exercise reflective task

Abstract

Sexual harassment has increasingly become recognized as a serious problem facing organizations and their employees. As many as 90 percent of questionnaire respondents answer affirmatively to a least one question regarding sexually harassing incidents within their workplace. Previous research has documented vast gender differences in perceptions, and suggests that training is the best way to combat these problems. This study looked at the affect of awareness training on attitudes toward sexual harassment. Awareness was measured by an attitude scale, which included questions about females and males being sexually harassed at work .. A score was given for both sets of questions, and overall. It was found that although the training did not affect female attitudes on any set of questions, it did significantly affect male attitudes. Female subjects already maintained a higher level of sensitivity to sexual harassment, and the training did not affect it further. One level of training, viewing a training video and completing a writing exercise, did affect males attitudes on all parts of the scale, and the gender difference was eliminated.

Notes

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Graduation Date

1992

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Shirkey, Edwin C.

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Format

PDF

Pages

72 pages

Language

English

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Identifier

DP0029853

Subjects

Arts and Sciences -- Dissertations; Academic; Dissertations; Academic -- Arts and Sciences; Sexual harassment--Psychological aspects; Sexual harassment--Prevention--Study and teaching; Employees--Training of--Psychological aspects; Women employees--Attitudes; Sexual harassment of men

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