PSH-C: A measure of peer sexual harassment among children

Abstract

Peer sexual harassment among adolescents is a widespread problem worldwide, associated with several adverse outcomes. Although retrospective reports indicate that people's first experience of peer sexual harassment occurs before puberty, research in younger ages is still scarce and measures of peer sexual harassment developed for children are lacking. This study explores the possibility of measuring peer sexual harassment in late childhood by evaluating a new scale of developmentally informed items, the Peer Sexual Harassment Scale—Child (PSH-C), designed to capture peer sexual harassment (i.e., victimization, perpetration, and witnessing) in late childhood (ages 10–12 years) in the school context. Self-report surveys were distributed to 1007 fourth-grade students in Sweden (M age = 10.0 years, SD =.3, n = 516 girls). The PSH-C showed good psychometric properties, supporting the scale's ability to capture peer sexual harassment in late childhood. Exploratory structural equation analyses suggested a two-factor structure which was confirmed by confirmatory factor analyses: 1) direct verbal sexual aggression, and 2) direct physical sexual harassment, verbal comments and jokes, and visual sexual harassment. The division of the structure contradicts previous studies of adolescents, possibly indicating a difference in the peer sexual harassment construct in relation to development and age.