The Online Workplace Sexual Harassment of Women

Abstract

As the workplace transitions to include more online communication, traditional conceptualizations of sexual harassment may not be sufficient in understanding employees’ workplace experiences. Through three studies, the present dissertation examines the how sexual harassment emerges in the online workplace and its impact on those who experience it. Study 1 uses the critical incidents method to capture online sexual harassment behaviors that respondents have experienced in their workplace. Study 1 also attempts to understand the structure of an online workplace sexual harassment factor through a principal components analysis and develops a measure. Participants reported experiencing behaviors that were not encompassed by traditional measures of workplace sexual harassment (Sexual Experiences Questionnaire – Work; Fitzgerald et al., 1995). Attempts to determine a construct factor structure based on subject matter incident sorting were inconclusive. Study 2 examines the factor structure of the online workplace sexual harassment construct using bifactor modeling, which demonstrates a 4-factor model with a strong general factor. The measure created in Study 1 was then refined. Traditional workplace sexual harassment is also directly compared with online workplace sexual harassment. Respondents reported experiencing traditional sexual harassment more frequently than online workplace sexual harassment. Finally, study 3 examines the relationship of online workplace sexual harassment with work-related and personal outcomes. This study showed that online workplace sexual harassment has similar relationships with outcomes as traditional sexual harassment but has no incremental validity over traditional workplace sexual harassment in predicting any outcomes. Overall, the findings indicate that online workplace sexual harassment emerges differently from traditional sexual harassment. However, experiencing online sexual harassment behaviors remains correlated with traditional outcomes of experiencing sexual harassment at work. Implications and future research are discussed.