2003 IMTA Proceedings - International Military Testing Association

242
higher rank than themselves perpetrated the harassment were identified as having experienced
Supervisor Harassment.
Subordinate Harassment. Subordinate Harassment was assessed by participant’s
responses to one of two questions regarding a subordinate’s perpetration of harassment. was
assessed by participant’s responses to one of two questions regarding a subordinate’s
perpetration of harassment.
Missing Data
Missing data was imputed utilizing a technique suggested by Bernaards, C. A. & Sijtsma,
K. (2000). The author’s recommend utilizing a two-way imputation of item mean and person
mean rather than relying on one or the other alone. "Two-way imputation (TW) calculates across
available scores the overall mean, the mean for item j and the mean for person i, and imputes IM
(item mean) + PM (person mean) –OM (overall mean) for missing observation (i,j)." (Bernaards,
C. A., et al., 2000, p. 331). Scale data was imputed based on total number of items in the scale. If
the scale contained 4-10 items only 1 item was utilized for imputation, if the scale contained 11-
20 items 2 items could be imputed and if the scale contained 21-30 items 3 items could be
imputed.
ANALYSIS
Following data collection and cleaning the dataset was randomly divided into a
developmental and a confirmatory sample (N=2951). The developmental sample was used to
examine variables that could differentiate between the group of individuals who reported none of
the harassment (Non-reporters, N=4471), some of the harassment (Partial Reporters, N=644), or
all of the harassment they had experienced (Complete Reporters, N=771). A host of variables
were included in the Multinomial Logistic Regressions performed separately for women and men
on the developmental sample. These variables included sex, level of education, race/ethnicity,
marital status, branch of service, paygrade, years of active-duty service, gender of supervisor,
gender mix of work group, perception of leadership, sexual behaviors, sexist behaviors,
unwanted sexual attention, sexual coercion, appraisal of harassment, where and when harassment
occurred, gender of the harasser(s), rank of the harasser(s), frequency and duration of
harassment, organizational tolerance, and sexual harassment training. Only those variables that,
when alone in the model, resulted in significant (≤.05) or marginally significant (≤ .15)
differentiation between the three groups were kept in the model for inclusion in testing using the
confirmatory sample 6 .
Following developmental sample analysis all significant or marginally significant
variables were input into separate Multinomial Logistic Regression models for the men and
women and run on the confirmatory sample 7 . Only two variables resulted in significant
discrimination between groups in the female confirmatory sample (see Figure 1). Interpretation
of these results reveals that in comparison to Non-reporters, individuals who only reported some
of the harassment they experienced were more likely to endorse experiencing sexist behaviors
and sexual coercion. Additionally when compared to Complete Reporters, Partial Reporters were
6 Despite significance results Gender Harassment, a combination of sexual and sexist behaviors, is omitted from the
training sample results and confirmatory sample model due to its redundancy and the author’s interest in
understanding its components.
7 Marital Status was erroneously entered into the model used in the confirmatory sample and is therefore omitted.
45 th Annual Conference of the International Military Testing Association
Pensacola, Florida, 3-6 November 2003