Initial assessment of the psychometric properties of the Sexual Harassment Reporting Attitudes Scale

Abstract

Although sexual harassment remains a common problem in the workplace, many victims and witnesses fail to report it to organizational authorities. Fear of retribution as well as perceptions of futility are widely cited as reasons for these reporting failures. Attitudes toward reporting sexual harassment in the workplace have only been marginally considered, and a scale to measure such attitudes does not currently exist. In the present study, we describe a newly developed scale to test this construct, as well as its initial psychometric properties. Our findings suggest that the Sexual Harassment Reporting Attitudes Scale (SHRAS) is reliable and valid, with three correlated subscales related to the risks of reporting, moral obligation to report, and its utility. The benefits and uses of the SHRAS for scholars and practitioners are discussed.

Keywords:

• sexual harassment
• workplace
• reporting
• attitudes
• psychometric

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT

Although sexual harassment remains a common problem in the workplace, many victims and witnesses fail to report it to organizational authorities. Fear of retribution as well as perceptions of futility are widely cited as reasons for these reporting failures. Attitudes toward reporting sexual harassment in the workplace have only been marginally considered, and a scale to measure such attitudes does not currently exist. In the present study, we describe a newly developed scale to test this construct, as well as its initial psychometric properties. Our findings suggest that the Sexual Harassment Reporting Attitudes Scale (SHRAS) is reliable and valid, with three correlated subscales related to the risks of reporting, moral obligation to report, and its utility. The benefits and uses of the SHRAS for scholars and practitioners are discussed.

Competing Interest

The authors declare no competing interest.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no direct funding for this research.

Notes on contributors

Brian Cesario

Dr. Brian Cesario is an assistant professor of industrial-organizational psychology, and has research interests in workplace sexual harassment and other forms of interpersonal aggression in the workplace. He collaborated with Dr Elizabeth J. Parks-Stamm (an experimental social psychologist with research interests in self-regulation and the role of stereotypes in performance situations) and Ms Mujgan U. Turgut (a former graduate student of his) on this research. The goal of this research was to develop a new scale to measure attitudes about reporting workplace sexual harassment, which can be used as an organizational training aid as well as for future empirical investigation.