Professional boundaries between faculty/staff and students in UK higher education: students’ levels of comfort with personal and sexualised interactions

Figures & data

Table 1. Comfort with staff actions: Principal axis factor analysis with Oblique (promax) rotation.

	Factor 1: Comfort with Sexualised Interactions	Factor 2: Comfort with Personal Interactions	Communalities
Asking you out on a date	.91	.01	.84
Telling you they are attracted to you	.92	−.03	.82
Commenting on your body	.77	.02	.61
Having sexual relations with students	.92	−.04	.80
Having romantic relationships with students	.85	.02	.75
Getting drunk with you or other students	.16	.44	.29
Adding you on Facebook	−.11	.85	.64
Communicating with you via private message on Facebook or WhatsApp	−.09	.91	.75
Arranging meetings with you that are outside academic timetable	.06	.53	.32
Eigenvalues	3.84	1.99
% of variance explained	43	22
α	.94	.78

Figure 1. Shows the percentage of responses across the scale for each item. The top four items make up the personalised interactions factor whilst the bottom five items measure the sexualised interaction factor.

Figure 2. Average scores for each of the main effects on sexualised interactions.

Table 2. Negative binomial regression exploring students’ perceptions towards sexualised interactions with staff.

	Incident Rate Ratio’s (SE)	z	p
Gender (Man reference)
Woman	0.48 (0.10)	−747	<.001***
Non-Binary	0.41 (.42)	−2.11	<.05*
Prefer not to say	0.77 (0.42)	−0.66	.537
Sexual Orientation (Heterosexual reference)
Gay/Lesbian	1.01 (0.22)	−0.07	.947
Bisexual/Bi	1.06 (0.15)	0.41	.685
Queer	0.66 (0.37)	−1.13	.260
Prefer not to say	1.19 (0.25)	0.71	.477
In another way	0.78 (0.35)	−0.71	.478
Ethnicity (White reference)
Black	1.11 (0.27)	0.39	.70
Asian	1.03 (.15)	0.22	.828
Mixed	1.19 (0.19)	0.92	.359
Other	0.79 (0.36)	−0.68	.50
Prefer not to say	1.66 (0.36)	1.43	.154
Home or International (Home reference)
International Student	1.39 (0.11)	2.97	<.01**
Prefer not to say	0.44 (0.77)	−1.06	.29
Level of Study (Undergraduate reference)
Postgraduate Taught	1.08 (0.12)	0.65	.514
Postgraduate Research	1.00(0.12)	−0.01	.995
Other	1.63 (0.24)	2.02	<0.05*

Figure 3. Average scores across each of the main effects on personalised interactions (error bars = SE).

Table 3. Multiple regression exploring the effects of demographics on students’ comfort with personalised interactions with staff.

	ß (SE)	t-value	p
Gender (Men reference)
Woman	−0.23 (0.22)	−8.35	<.001***
Non-Binary	−0.43 (0.91)	−1.47	.14
Prefer not to say	−0.07 (0.97)	−2.492	<.05*
Sexual Orientation (Heterosexual reference)
Gay/Lesbian	0.01 (0.49)	0.51	.61
Bisexual/Bi	0.07 (0.33)	2.75	<.01**
Queer	0.03 (0.80)	1.11	.267
Prefer not to say	0.03 (0.56)	1.07	.285
In another way	0.04 (0.76)	1.67	.95
Ethnicity (White reference)
Black	−0.06 (0.60)	−2.51	<.05*
Asian	−0.07 (0.33)	−2.78	<.01**
Mixed	−0.02 (0.43)	−0.85	0.40
Other	−0.03 (0.78)	−1.23	0.22
Prefer not to say	0.03 (0.81)	−1.08	0.28
Home or International (Home reference)
International Student	0.07 (0.25)	2.45	0.05*
Prefer not to say	−0.02 (1.68)	−0.83	0.408
Level of Study (Undergraduate reference)
Postgraduate Taught	0.01 (0.27)	0.28	0.780
Postgraduate Research	0.05 (0.27)	1.85	0.064
Other	−0.01 (0.55)	−0.08	0.939