Graduate Students' Experiences with and Responses to Sexual Harassment

Abstract

This brief note reports on selected results from an anonymous, mailed questionnaire survey of a probability sample of 281 graduate students about sexual harassment. The 132 male and 149 female master's and Ph.D. degree candidates at a large, public, south-central university responded to questions about their experiences with and responses to sexual harassment by faculty while in graduate school. Results indicated that 9% of the men and 35% of the women indicated they had been sexually harassed at this institution. The offender tended to be a professor (but not major adviser), rather than an instructor or lecturer. The most common responses by students to such harassment were to avoid professional activities with the faculty member and to report the harassment to a friend, adviser, or department chair. These results are discussed in terms of a power perspective.