Perceived Sexual-Orientation-Based Harassment in Military and Civilian Contexts

Abstract

The Office of the Inspector General's (2000) Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue Survey was the Department of Defense's first assessment of perceived sexual-orientation-based harassment in the military. For the study presented here, a parallel survey was developed to collect comparable data from a civilian sample. Responses of 196 civilian participants were compared to that of 200 military participants selected randomly from the Department of Defense sample. In each group, the most commonly reported type of harassment was offensive speech, and most reported incidents involved men as perpetrators and as targets. Both civilian and military groups perceived fairly low levels of all 8 types of sexual-orientation-based harassment, but civilians reported higher levels of offensive speech and hostile gestures than did military respondents. On the other hand, larger percentages of military than civilian respondents reported that a senior person perpetrated and witnessed the harassment. In both groups, approximately one third of participants who indicated that a senior person witnessed the incident also reported that the senior person attempted to stop it. Findings are interpreted in light of contextual differences between military and civilian groups that might shape reports of sexual-orientation-based harassment. Recommendations are made for refining assessment of sexual-orientation-based harassment in the military.