Sexual jokes at school and students\u2019 life satisfaction: findings from the 2017/18 Swedish Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study

Sara Brolin Låftman,Ylva Bjereld,Bitte Modin,Petra Löfstedt

doi:10.1186/s13104-021-05691-9

Abstract

ObjectiveIn a previous study we demonstrated that the occurrence of sexual jokes in the class was associated with higher levels of psychological health complaints. Building on and extending these findings, the aim of the current study was to examine if exposure to sexual jokes at the student and at the class level was inversely associated with students’ life satisfaction. Data were derived from the 2017/18 Swedish Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, with students aged 11, 13 and 15 years (n = 3710 distributed across 209 classes). Exposure to sexual jokes at the student level was captured by one item. Exposure to sexual jokes at the class level was calculated by aggregating this measure. The Cantril ladder was used to operationalise life satisfaction. Two-level logistic regression analyses were performed.ResultsStudents who were exposed to sexual jokes at school were less likely to report high life satisfaction (OR 0.38, 95% CI 0.27–0.53). An inverse association was found between the class proportion of students who were exposed to sexual jokes and students’ likelihood of reporting high life satisfaction, whilst adjusting for exposure to sexual jokes at the student level (OR 0.98, 95% CI 0.97–0.9994). The findings highlight the importance of promoting a school climate without sexual harassment.

Highlights

Sexual harassment may be verbal or non-verbal, and one type of verbal harassment is sexual jokes [1]
As demonstrated in Model 1 (Table 1), students who were exposed to sexual jokes at school had a lower likelihood of reporting high life satisfaction, whilst adjusting for gender and grade
This study showed that students who were exposed to sexual jokes at school had a lower likelihood of reporting high life satisfaction, compared with students who were not exposed to sexual jokes

Summary

Introduction

Sexual harassment may be verbal or non-verbal, and one type of verbal harassment is sexual jokes [1]. Prior research has shown that exposure to sexual harassment is associated with higher levels of psychological problems among adolescents [1, 2, 4, 6,7,8]. Analyses based on the same data as the current study demonstrated that the occurrence of sexual jokes in the class was associated with higher levels of psychological health complaints even when adjusting for student level exposure to sexual jokes [1], suggesting that those not directly targeted may be affected. Sexual harassment in school has been reported to be perceived as problematic by students who are directly exposed, and by many of the students who are non-exposed [9]. Less is known about the Låftman et al BMC Res Notes (2021) 14:288 potential individual and contextual effects of exposure to sexual harassment on adolescents’ positive mental health

Methods

Results

Conclusion