into the topical areas labeled: military service, education, personal assessment, personal resources, gender, and sexuality. ‘‘Personal assessment’’ included the items addressing harassment as well as agree/ disagree responses to statements such as ‘‘I feel that my time in the military made me a better person.’’ ‘‘Personal resources’’ included questions about outside activities (e.g., ‘‘I participated in informal team sports on base’’) as well as items on subjects such as counseling, smoking, drug and alcohol use, and appearance. A number of open-ended items were included to allow respondents to provide, in their own words, descriptive accounts of the experiences that were being measured in the closed-ended items as well as information about which I might not have thought to ask. These items, reflected throughout this chapter, provided some of the richest data I received.7 Several items from these surveys were analyzed using frequency distributions and cross-tabulations with the chi-square statistic to determine significance. I also utilized logistic regression analyses to examine the relationships between several independent variables (e.g., age, rank, sexual orientation, branch of service) and the dichotomous dependent variables of () whether respondents thought sexual harassment was a problem in the military and () whether they had experienced harassment. Is Sexual Harassment a Problem for Women in the Military?
Respondents were asked to answer yes or no to the following statement regarding their perceptions of harassment: ‘‘I think that sexual harassment is a problem for most women in the military.’’ Sixtyfour percent of the sample indicated that, yes, sexual harassment was a problem. Respondents were then asked to indicate whether they felt that the following statement regarding their own experience was definitely not true, probably not true, uncertain, probably true, or definitely true: ‘‘I believe that I was sexually harassed while in the military.’’ Sixty-nine percent indicated that this was probably true (. percent) or definitely true (. percent). There was a signifi222
DOMINANCE, HARASSMENT, AND WOMEN