The aim of the present research was to investigate attitudes toward sexual harassment (SH) and the relationships of these attitudes with locus of control and ambivalent sexism. A total of 311 university students from Middle East Technical University participated to the study. In order to measure attitudes toward SH, a new scale, Sexual Harassment Attitude Scale (SHAS), was developed by the author of the thesis and another researcher (Salman & / Turgut, 2006). This scale consists of three subfactors which were accepting SH as a result of provocative behaviors, accepting SH as normal flirtations between men and women, and endorsement of SH as a trivial matter. Locus of control was measured with Locus of Control Scale (LCS, Dag, 2002) having five subfactors which were personal control, belief in chance, meaninglessness of the effortfulness, belief in fate, and belief in an unjust world. Lastly, sexist beliefs were measured with Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI, Glick & / Fiske, 1996) having two factors which were hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. The results revealed that some domains of locus of control were significantly associated with sexist beliefs and subfactors of attitudes toward SH. In particular, people having internal personal control were more likely to accept SH as provocative behaviors of women. In addition, people believing in external forces, such as belief in fate and powerful others were more likely to have sexist beliefs and tolerate SH by seeing provocative behaviors as causes of SH, by accepting SH as normal flirtations and by trivializing this problem.
This thesis aims to contribute to the literature by investigating (1) attitudes toward sexual harassment and its relationship with locus of control and (2) the roles of ambivalent sexism and gender differences in this relationship.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:METU/oai:etd.lib.metu.edu.tr:http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12608847/index.pdf |
| Date | 01 October 2007 |
| Creators | Salman, Selin |
| Contributors | Sakalli-ugurlu, Nuray |
| Publisher | METU |
| Source Sets | Middle East Technical Univ. |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | M.S. Thesis |
| Format | text/pdf |
| Rights | To liberate the content for public access |
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