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Sexual Harassment and Bullying Behaviors in Sixth-Graders

NCJ Number
222050
Journal
Journal of School Violence Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Dated: 2008 Pages: 21-38
Author(s)
Lauren P. Ashbaugh; Dewey G. Cornell
Date Published
2008
Length
37 pages
Annotation
The purpose of this study was to examine the incidence of sexual harassment in middle school students with emphasis on student perceptions of its seriousness and how they responded to it.
Abstract
It was found that sexual harassment was a common experience for the sixth grade students surveyed. Twenty-nine percent of the surveyed students reported experiencing physical, verbal, or nonverbal sexual harassment at least once in the past 30 days. The most frequently reported forms of bullying and sexual harassment were verbal, such as taunts, teasing, and inappropriate jokes. Most of the girls and half of the boys surveyed felt worried or unset by their sexual harassment experiences. It was concluded that the two behaviors, bullying and sexual harassment are related in middle school which warrants further attention. In addition, the results support previous research suggesting that sexual harassment and bullying victimization are common experiences in early adolescence, even among sixth grade students. The need to determine the correspondence between harassment and bullying and to assess gender differences in both the frequency and severity of harassment has been indicated from previous studies. Accordingly, this study examined the prevalence of sexual harassment in a sixth grade sample and assessed events within the past 30 days rather than all events the students could recall. It was hypothesized that there would be high correspondence between sexual harassment and bullying, and that girls would experience more frequent sexual harassment than boys and be more distressed by it. The study sample consisted of 124 sixth grade students from a suburban middle school in Virginia. Tables, references