Factorial Structure and Evidence of Validity and Reliability of the Mexican Sexual Street Harassment Questionnaire

Abstract

Sexual street harassment has gone from being considered a romantic expression of courtship to a form of harassment and, therefore, an expression of gender-based violence. Due to the impact it has on women and the characteristics that surround its expression, there is still confusion in the characterization of this phenomenon and in the measurement of its magnitude; therefore, the objective of this research was to build and establish evidence of validity and reliability of the Mexican Sexual Street Harassment Questionnaire. Derived from the literature, a two-part questionnaire was constructed: the first explores the forms of harassment and its frequency, and the second collects reactions to harassment. Two samples of women under 30 years of age were used: the first to perform the exploratory factor analysis, and the second to perform the confirmatory factor analysis. The exploratory factor analysis yielded three factors for the first part, which were named "non-physical harassment," "physical harassment," and "explicit harassment." The second part also shows three factors named "negative reactions," "neutral and positive reactions," and "self-defense reactions." Both parts show evidence of validity and reliability superior to other published questionnaires. The confirmatory factor analysis shows excellent goodness of fit indices for both parts, which verifies the good fit of the model. The implications of the study would be that there is enough evidence that the questionnaire can be used in national surveys and can facilitate legislation on this type of behavior.