Labeling sexual harassment in the military: an extension and replication

Research conducted by V. Magley, C. Hulin, L. F. Fitzgerald, and M. DeNardo (1999) has suggested that women who experience sexual harassment report worse outcomes independent of the labeling process. This study replicates and extends that work. Discriminant analyses were conducted on a sample of approximately 28,000 men and women from the military. The authors included variables similar to those used by V. Magley et al., as well as a variety of antecedent variables. Two significant functions were obtained from the discriminant analysis. The 1st function ordered groups according to the frequency of harassment and accounted for substantially more variance than did the 2nd function, which ordered groups according to whether they labeled their experiences as sexual harassment. The overall results from these analyses demonstrate that labeling incidents as sexual harassment is of marginal meaningfulness in terms of job outcomes and antecedents of harassment.