What does harassment do to the woman at the workplace? A study of the outcomes of sexual harassment in the workplace shows that relatively low-level but frequent types of sexual harassment can have significant negative consequences for working women (J Applied Psychology 1997, Vol. 82, No. 3, 401-415). Psychological well-being and, particularly, job attitudes and work behaviors are affected.
The sexual harassment experiences, coping responses, and job-related and psychological outcomes of 447 female private-sector employees (Sample 1) and 300 female university employee (Sample 2) were examined in a Workplace Environmental Survey.
Responses to the survey's sexual harassment experience queries were assessed by a revised, 18-item version of the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ; Fitzgerald, Gelfand, & Drasgow, 1995). The SEQ presents respondents with behavioral items describing three types of sexual harassment: Gender Harassment, Unwanted Sexual Attention, and Sexual Coercion. On the SEQ's specific-incident section respondents were directed to choose the experience that had most impressed them.
The survey also measured both the Sample 1 and the Sample 2 women's work attitudes (satisfaction, commitment); work behaviors (e.g., absenteeism, tardiness); job withdrawal (intention to resign); psychological outcomes (well-being, life satisfaction, posttraumatic stress); and general job stress, affective disposition, and harassment attitudes.
In Sample 1, 300 of the 447 respondents (68%) endorsed a SEQ item, denoting at least one sexually harassing behavior in the previous 24 months; in Sample 2,189 of the 300 (63%) endorsed at least one SEQ item. Seventy-four percent of Sample 1 experienced the harassment on a repeated basis and 75% of those women stayed away from the harasser or told themselves it was not important. In Sample 2, repeated experiences were only 39% of the total reported behaviors; the majority of the women, as in Sample 1, chose to deal with the situation passively.
The effects of sexual harassment on victims' job-related and psychological outcomes were estimated through multiple-group discriminant function analyses. These indicated that women who had not been harassed and women who had experienced low, moderate, and high frequencies of harassment could be distinguished on the basis of both job-related and psychological outcomes. These outcomes could not be attributed to negative mood disposition, attitudes toward harassment, or general job stress.
Women who had experienced high levels of harassment reported the worst job-related and psychological outcomes. Yet harassment did not have to be particularly egregious to result in negative consequences. Employees who made complaints about harassment on the job were not necessarily being oversensitive to innocuous events. Although these women did not see themselves as victims of harassment, they still experienced negative outcomes due to the situations to which they were exposed. Thus, experiencing harassment appears to be more important in determining outcomes than labeling oneself as a harassment victim.
Given the prevalence of harassment suggested by this study and the emotional impact on victims of even less frequent events, efforts to eliminate it are well-guided. Even with the proliferation of harassment suits, the study bears out the underreporting of such inappropriate workplace conduct, as well as the impact it does have on victims. WHY DOES SOME HOSPITAL VIOLENCE PERSIST? According to a recent study, violent behavior in psychiatric patients is best understood by considering its course in relation to clinical symptoms, neurological impairments, and situational factors (Comprehensive Psychiatry, Vol. 38, No. 4 (July/August), 1997; p.p. 230-236). Physical assaults decreased as psychotic symptoms improved, but a reduction in violence over time was more strongly related to intact frontal lobe functioning, implying an ability to appropriately modify behavior.
Psychiatric symptoms were assessed in 75 newly admitted physically assaultive psychiatric hospital patients and 62 nonviolent controls. The assaultive patients were then evaluated for four weeks to determine the persistence or resolution of their physical assaults. Those who were no longer assaultive were classified as transiently violent (41), while those who remained assaultive were categorized as persistently violent (34). The majority of physical assaults did not result in injury.
Demographic and historical data including past psychiatric history, crime, and drug/alcohol abuse were obtained through patient interview and review of medical records. Violent patients as a group were contrasted to nonviolent controls; persistently and transiently violent patients were then compared with each other. These comparisons were made at baseline (emergent violence phase) and at end point (persistence/resolution phase). The impact of psychiatric symptoms, neurological impairment, and hospital ward agitation on physical assaults was investigated.
Occurrence of violent crimes in the persistently violent group was 43.8% versus 18.2% in the controls and 20% in the transiently violent patients. No significant differences appeared in gender, age, ethnicity, or diagnosis between the two violent groups. The persistently violent patients showed less resolution of psychiatric symptoms. The overall Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale score was higher in the persistently violent subjects mostly because of more severe positive psychotic symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, or disordered communication. Only hostility/paranoia was significantly worse, however.
The more violent group showed greater impairment on the Quantified Neurological Scale frontal lobe functioning and more dysfunction on motor integrative tasks. Patients' physical assaults were significantly more associated with ward agitation in the transiently violent group. This suggests that these subjects were more susceptible to social input in general, whether adversely, through ward turmoil, or positively, through staff feedback about inappropriate behaviors. It also guides staff to separating newly admitted transiently violent from the more tumultuous parts of the unit.
This study of the role of psychosis, frontal lobe impairment, and ward turmoil in psychiatric patient violence has implications for those charged with risk management, particularly at state hospitals where patients are referred with histories already available.
