Observer Intervention in Sexual Harassment
/In late 2018, a group of us won the prestigious “EMERGE” (Evidence-based Measures of Empowerment for Research on Gender Equality) research grant offered by the University of California, San Diego’s Center on Gender Equity and Health (GEH).
This team was: Aarti Shyamsunder, Charu Khanna, Ayesha Sharma and Sister Patricia D’Souza, and we are grateful to Sophia college for the support, and of course, GEH for the grant and constant support and encouragement!
As Primary Investigator (PI) on this research grant, I led the development of a tool that can serve as a diagnostic as well as a coaching aide, to help organizations in their efforts to prevent sexual harassment at work. Specifically, this is a scenario-based (single-item situational judgment format) tool, which enables observers to create mental scripts of how to behave during or after incidents of sexual harassment.
Our research found that observer intervention behaviors can be one (or more) of the following “ABCD” styles:
Appeal to Authority
Buffer/Break
Call out/Confront
Defuse/De-escalate
To learn more about the study and the tool, check out our report, watch our presentation at the SIOP Virtual Conference 2020, or read our peer-reviewed publications here (contains the tool itself) and here (commentary in a Special Issue on anti-harassment training at work).