Award Date

May 2023

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Criminal Justice

First Committee Member

Margaret A. Kennedy

Second Committee Member

Emily Troshynski

Third Committee Member

William Sousa

Fourth Committee Member

Maxim Gakh

Number of Pages

68

Abstract

The awareness of sexual harassment has been growing within the workplace, in the home, and within public areas. The #MeToo movement has shined light on this issue in recent years. This study aimed to understand how college students perceive sexual harassment within three scenarios: a music student and their teacher, two coworkers, and between an academic advisor and an adult student. This study included 531 responses from a diverse student population at a Southwest university. Consistent with previous findings, women were more likely to recognize sexually harassing behaviors. There were no significant gender differences in blame attribution in any of the three scenarios. Victims of childhood sexual abuse were more likely to recognize sexually harassing behavior in the child scenario. Previous experiences of sexual harassment were significant in the two student scenarios. Race was only significant in the music student scenario. Finally, we found sexual harassment acknowledgment and blame attribution were significant in the coworker scenario when compared to the adult student scenario.

Keywords

blame attribution; college students; perceptions; race; sexual harassment; vignette

Disciplines

Criminology | Criminology and Criminal Justice

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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