Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment in the U.S. Military: Top-Line Estimates for Active-Duty Service Members from the 2014 RAND Military Workplace Study

Abstract

Abstract : In early 2014, the Department of Defense (DoD) Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) asked the RAND National Defense Research Institute (NDRI) to conduct an independent assessment of sexual assault, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination in the military an assessment last conducted in 2012 by the department itself through the Workplace and Gender Relations Survey of Active Duty Personnel (WGRA). This report provides preliminary top-line estimates from the resulting study, the RAND Military Workplace Study (RMWS), which invited close to 560,000 service members to participate in a survey fielded in August and September of 2014. Compared to the prior DoD studies, the RMWS takes a new approach to counting individuals in the military who experienced sexual assault, sexual harassment, or gender discrimination. Our measurement of sexual assault aligns closely with the definitions and criteria in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) for Article 120 and Article 80 crimes. The survey measures of sexual harassment and gender discrimination, which together we refer to as sex-based military equal opportunity (MEO) violations, use criteria drawn directly from DoD Directive 1350.2. Compared with past surveys that were designed to measure a climate of sexual misconduct associated with illegal behavior, our approach offers greater precision in estimating the number of crimes and MEO violations that have occurred.