Development of an Inclusive Measure of Gender-Based Public Harassment

Abstract

Gender-based public harassment (GBPH) encompasses a wide variety of behaviors that are enacted by strangers in public places and are likely motivated by targets’ perceived gender, sexual orientation, and/or gender expression. Such behaviors range from whistles, stares, and appearance-related comments to touching, following, and genital exposure. Measures currently used to assess GBPH are limited, as they disproportionately reflect the forms of harassment experienced by straight White cisgender women (mirroring early conceptualizations of the construct as an exclusively man-to-woman phenomenon). The limited scope of current measures is significant, given evidence that rates of GBPH are higher among those who are transgender/nonbinary (TNB), gender nonconforming (GNC), queer, and/or people of color (POC). Thus, the purpose of this study was to develop a measure of GBPH that was inclusive of the harassment experiences of those who are TNB/GNC, queer, and/or POC and to assess the reliability and validity of scores on the measure within large, diverse samples of US adults. Analyses of data from a scoping review process as well as five samples of participants (N = 1,511 total) produced a 31-item, two-factor measure—the Gender-Based Public Harassment Checklist (GBPH-C)—that assessed both sexist and cisheterosexist forms of harassment. Scores on the full GBPH-C (Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 [KR] = .93) as well as its two subscales (KRs = .86, .92) exhibited a high degree of internal consistency. Temporal response consistency was high at the item level, with an average of 85.0% of participants providing a consistent response to each item of the GBPH-C one week later. Additionally, evidence was found for the GBPH-C’s content, construct, and criterion validity, as indicated by favorable ratings from expert judges and members of the target population, differential item endorsement across particular demographic groups, and correlations of hypothesized strength between scores on the GBPH-C and scores on measures of relevant constructs (i.e., personality, nonspecific psychological distress, hypervigilance, and stranger harassment). Using the GBPH-C, the lifetime prevalence of GBPH was alarmingly high overall (87.5%) and rates were elevated among marginalized groups. Potential uses of the GBPH-C are discussed, including clinical assessment of minority stress and estimation of the prevalence/incidence of GBPH at the national level.