title: Assessing sexual harassment among Latinas: development of an instrument.
abstract: This study draws from multiple data sources and analytic approaches to offer preliminary evidence on how to assess sexual harassment among Latinas working in the United States, particularly working-class Mexican American women with moderately low acculturation. First, focus group data were collected from 45 Latinas to identify culture-specific manifestations of sexually harassing behavior. These data informed the development of new items for the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ: L. F. Fitzgerald et al., 1988), making it more appropriate for administration to Latinas with limited education. A 2nd Latina sample (N = 476) then completed this and other scales in a paper-and-pencil survey. Complete-link hierarchical cluster analyses of the SEQ data, based on a random half-sample of these women, revealed an underlying 3-factor structure. Confirmatory factor analyses on the 2nd half-sample confirmed that this factor model fit the data well, and both the individual factors and the larger scale appear highly reliable. Implications of both new and discarded SEQ-Latina items, the 3-factor structure, and relationships among the factors were discussed.
authors.affiliation: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. lilia@umich.edu
authors.forename: L M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Cortina
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002140:California; D002641:Chicago; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D017058:Mexican Americans / Q000523:psychology; D008800:Mexico / Q000208:ethnology; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017406:Sexual Harassment / Q000208:ethnology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires