2022-2023 Grant in Aid of Research

An Examination of associations between gender, age, occupation, and type of institution among selected Zambian higher education institutions’ students, faculty/staff and administrators and attitudes and perceptions towards sexual harassment

Earlymay Chibende

Sexual harassment is an international social ill that needs to be identified and confronted because of the negative effects it has on victims. Sexual harassment is an infringement of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the American context and a contravention of The Gender Equity and Equality Act 22 of 2015 in the Zambian context. While research exists on sexual harassment in Western institutions of higher learning, there is a dearth of research on sexual harassment in Zambian institutions of higher learning. This advocacy research project seeks to investigate the relationship between age, gender, occupation, type of school and attitudes and or perceptions towards identifying, reporting and addressing sexual harassment in Zambian higher education institutions. This research will employ a quantitative, non-experimental canonical correlational research design and SPSS will be used for data processing. The research population is Zambian higher education bachelors’ students who comprise 80.3% of the university students in Zambia. The sample will be drawn from four Zambian higher education institutions in different categories. The sample will consist of 640 male and 640 female students, 108 male and 112 female faculty/staff/administrator category. The target is a minimum of 320 respondents distributed along age, gender, occupation, and type of institution.

Attitudes towards identifying sexual harassment will be measured using the ‘Sexual Harassment Attitude Scale,’ the ‘Sexual Harassment Reporting Attitude Scale’ will be used to measure attitudes towards reporting, and perceptions towards addressing sexual harassment will be measured using the ‘Organizational Tolerance for Sexual Harassment Inventory.’