In 2002, the Department of Defense (DoD) and Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) conducted the third DoD-wide survey on sexual harassment and other unprofessional, gender-related experiences of active duty military personnel. This report describes advances from previous surveys and presents results on scale development as obtained from 19,960 respondents to the survey.The 16-page survey booklet included an in-depth series of questions concerning background and workplace demographics, mentoring, readiness, health and well-being, genderrelated experiences in the military, as well as personnel and policy practices. Scales were composed of multiple items and results were reported in terms of reliability coefficients (i.e., Cronbach's coefficient alpha), means, standard deviations, standard errors, and frequency counts. Scales, rather than single items, were utilized because measures that rely on multiple items to tap a construct of interest are more reliable than those relying on single items. Statistics are reported for men and women combined and separately by gender.Particular attention was paid to assessing unprofessional, gender-related behavior and sexual harassment. Historically, different methods of calculating sexual harassment rates have been employed in DoD-wide and Service-wide surveys of sexual harassment. This resulted in rates that were not comparable across surveys. In November 1998, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Equal Opportunity (DASD [EO]) convened a meeting of Service and Reserve Component representatives to review existing measures and make recommendations for a standardized method for use in both DoD-and Service-wide surveys. The resulting measure is based on two survey questions which represent the "DoD Sexual Harassment Core Measure" (Survey Method for Counting Incidents of Sexual Harassment, 2002). The measure consisted of thirteen items, twelve items that measured unprofessional, gender-related behaviors, and one item that asked Service members whether they considered any of the core gender-related behaviors to have been sexual harassment. Together, these thirteen items are used to calculate the incident rate for the DoD Sexual Harassment Core Measure.
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STATUS OF THE ARMED FORCES SURVEY-WORKPLACE AND GENDER RELATIONS: REPORT ON SCALES AND MEASURES
IntroductionThe 2002 Status of the Armed Forces Survey-Workplace and Gender Relations (2002 WGR) is the third Department of Defense (DoD)-wide survey of active-duty members that focuses on sexual harassment and gender issues. The first survey was fielded in 1988 and the second in 1995.1 survey (1995, was designed to both estimate the level of sexual harassment in the Services and provide new information on a variety of potential antecedents and consequences of harassment (Bastian, Lancaster, & Reyst, 1996). The new measures were intended to increase understanding of sexual harassment and of policies and programs that prevent it from occurring, as well as gather information on a variety of workplace issues.2002 W...