Abstract
Although sexual harassment has become an important and controversial topic in social science research in recent years, little research has been done regarding the factors involved in the perception of a single ambiguous social-sexual incident. Furthering the analysis of Gutek, Morasch, and Cohen (1983), factor analytic, cluster analytic, and multidimensional scaling techniques were supplied to a set of 19 questions which were used to evaluate some ambiguous vignettes that could have been considered instances of sexual harassment. These analyses yielded four major clusters: (1) variables relating to the interpersonal relationship between the individuals in the vignette, (2) personal aspects of the incident, (3) questions relating specifically to sexual harassment, and (4) questions regarding the likelihood of the incident. Questions about “sexual” and “harassing” aspects of the incident were less central to its evaluation by college students than were those about the incident's personal qualities and about the relationship between the two people.
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The first author would like to thank Dr. Lawrence Hubert, Department of Education, University of California, Santa Barbara, for his inspiration and help with these analyses. The authors would like to thank Bruce Morasch and Paul Phillips for their help in the collection and preliminary analyses of these data. This research was in part assisted by support from the National Institute of Mental Health, Grant USPHS-MH-32606-01, to the second author.
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Cohen, A.G., Gutek, B.A. Dimensions of perceptions of social-sexual behavior in a work setting. Sex Roles 13, 317–327 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00288088
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00288088