Measuring Egyptian Women’s Vulnerability to Sexual Harassment Threat: Reliability and Validity Evidence

Abstract

This study developed an instrument to assess Arab women’s perception of the threat of sexual harassment (SH). In order to capture the cultural and interpersonal aspects related to Arab women’s views of such a phenomenon, this study utilized an instrument of seven scales with a total of 76 items: Threat of SH, exposure to SH, society awareness, social engagement, religiosity, the effect of media, and perceived stress. The convenience sample in the study consisted of 1948 females aged 19-45 years from five governorates in Egypt. The study results provided evidence of internal consistency reliability and internal structure evidence of validity for the scales. Implications for social work education and practice were presented. Sexual harassment remains a salient phenomenon in societies around the world. In fact, in some societies there is evidence that incidences of sexual harassment are increasing. In the last 20 years the spread and rise of sexual harassment in the Arab world has been reported in a number of studies (Al-Kylani, 2014; Ilahi, 2009; Soliman, Abdelmonem, & Koran, 2019). Egypt is considered among the countries where street harassment has become a risk that young women have to face on a daily basis (Davidson, Butchko, Robbins, Sherd, & Gervais, 2016). The trend of incidents of changes in behavior, attitude, and sense of responsibility has dramatically changed among Egyptians following the events and political changes of 2011 (El-Ashmawy, 2017). The purpose of this study was to understand and measure sexual harassment as a culturally-embedded phenomenon. The initial review of the literature showed the need for culturally appropriate and theoretically grounded measures encompassing the interactive nature and the multiple facets of sexual harassment. This study collected reliability and validity evidence with scales that assess Egyptian women’s perceptions of the threat of sexual harassment: The Women’s Perspective of the Threat of Sexual Harassment (WPTSH).