1
Introduction
Recent years have brought to light a long-standing and pervasive issue in academia—sexual harassment. A report of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM, 2018) (hereafter, National Academies) found disturbingly high rates of sexual harassment in academia: more than 50 percent of female faculty and staff and between 20 and 50 percent of female students in higher education institutions reported experiencing sexually harassing behavior. The devastating impact of sexual harassment, both to those affected and the institutions, has highlighted the need for system-wide changes to the culture and climate in higher education to prevent and effectively respond to sexual harassment. As the 2018 National Academies report notes, the “cumulative effect of sexual harassment is significant damage to research integrity and a costly loss of talent in academic sciences, engineering, and medicine.”
Rising awareness of and increased attention to sexual harassment has resulted in momentum to implement sexual harassment prevention efforts in higher education institutions. For example, the National Academies’ Action Collaborative on Preventing Sexual Harassment in Higher Education (hereafter, Action Collaborative) is an activity of more than 60 colleges, universities, and other research and training institutions that are identifying, researching, developing, and implementing efforts that move beyond basic legal compliance to evidence-based policies and practices for addressing and preventing all forms of sexual harassment and promoting a campus climate
of civility and respect. Importantly, this effort expands beyond the 2018 report to push for targeted, collective action across all disciplines and among all people in higher education. The Action Collaborative produced a Year 1 Annual Report (NASEM, 2020a) highlighting overall progress and summarizing members’ actions during the first year. As that report notes, work on preventing sexual harassment is an area that has recently garnered a lot of attention, especially around education and programs that go beyond the standard anti-sexual harassment trainings often used to comply with legal requirements. The annual report states that “although increased attention in this space is encouraging, there is a significant need for evaluation of the effectiveness of such prevention efforts, but also over a longer time span.”
On April 20–21, 2021, the National Academies hosted a workshop aimed at tackling this issue: see Box 1-1 for the statement of task. Due to public health restrictions on in-person gatherings related to the COVID-19 pandemic, this workshop was held virtually. The workshop included discussion around approaches and strategies for evaluating and measuring the effectiveness of sexual harassment interventions being implemented at higher education institutions and research and training sites to assist institutions in transforming promising ideas into evidence-based best practices. Workshop participants also addressed methods, metrics, and measures that could be used to evaluate sexual harassment prevention efforts.
This workshop proceedings largely follows the organization of the workshop. Following this introduction, Chapter 2 sets the stage, summarizing what is known about the current state of evaluation efforts to assess sexual harassment prevention activities in higher education. Chapter 3 provides an overview of prevention science and implementation science and their application to evaluating sexual harassment prevention. Chapter 4 includes a summary of challenges, barriers, and limitations related to evaluating sexual harassment prevention efforts. Chapter 5 offers participants’ reflections from the workshop presentations and discussion, and Chapter 6 discusses examples of on-the-ground intervention evaluation work and describes relevant resources related to implementation science. Finally, Chapter 7 provides expert reflections on the workshop by industrial-organizational psychologist Eden King of Rice University, which was commissioned by the planning committee. Box 1-2 presents the definitions of key terms used in this proceedings.
Appendixes A, B, and C are the workshop agenda, biographical sketches of committee members and presenters, and a list of workshop participants. Appendix D is a set of case studies that were provided prior to the workshop, and Appendix E is a worksheet of resources for applying implementation science models to the evaluation of sexual harassment prevention efforts.
Throughout the workshop, participants considered the presentations and discussions within the context of six case studies in Appendix D: examples of actual programs, policies, or practices currently being carried out in higher education institutions around the country. As a part of their commitment to the Action Collaborative, member institutions annually submit these “Descriptions of Work,” which are then made publicly available. Each participant was assigned to one of the six case studies and asked to review the description in advance of the workshop. The purpose of the case studies was to help participants consider how actual prevention efforts might be evaluated for effectiveness.
