Perception, attitude and behavior about sexual harassment and their associates among college students in Beijing

  Objective  To explore sexual harassment-related perceptions, attitudes, behaviors and their influencing factors among college students in Beijing city, and provide evidences for developing relevant health education programs for the students.

  Methods  Totally 900 students from 6 colleges in Beijing city were recruited with stratified cluster random sampling and interviewed face-to-face with a self-designed questionnaire during March – May 2019. Chi-square test and logistic regression were adopted in statistical analysis.

  Results  Among the 872 students with valid response, 59.52% reported ever having sexual harassment victimization and significantly more girl students reported the victimization than the boy students (63.03% vs. 55.45%, χ² = 5.182; P = 0.023). Of all the valid respondents, 96.19% reported being aware of sexual harassment; 66.90% and 70.64% reported positive attitude and coping behavior towards sexual harassment; and 78.10% expressed the willingness to acquire knowledge about sexual harassment via online education, respectively. The results of multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that about sexual harassment among the respondents: (1) better perception was related to gender (female vs. male: odds ratio OR = 5.730, 95% confidence interval 95% CI: 2.584 – 12.708) and registered family residence (urban vs. rural: OR = 0.203, 95% CI: 0.088 – 0.468); (2) positive attitude was influenced by gender (female vs. male: OR = 1.627, 95% CI: 1.191 – 2.221), registered family residence (urban vs. rural: OR = 0.705, 95% CI: 0.516 – 0.96), schooling grade (graduate vs. freshman: OR = 2.517, 95% CI: 1.258 – 5.034), and total perception score (1.226, 95% CI: 1.013 – 1.486); and (3) appropriate coping behavior was impacted by gender (female vs. male: OR = 0.560, 95% CI: 0.412 – 0.760), registered family residence (urban vs. rural: OR = 0.737, 95% CI: 0.543 – 0.999), parental relationship (good vs. neither good nor bad: OR = 0.509, 95% CI: 0.357 – 0.725), and total attitude score (OR = 1.128, 95% CI: 1.068 – 1.191).

  Conclusion  The prevalence of sexual harassment is high among college students and many of the students are lack of adequate cognition, positive attitude and appropriate coping behavior towards sexual harassment.