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. 2014 Jul 16;9(7):e102172.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0102172. eCollection 2014.

Survey of academic field experiences (SAFE): trainees report harassment and assault

Kathryn B H Clancy  1 , Robin G Nelson  2 , Julienne N Rutherford  3 , Katie Hinde  4
Affiliations

Survey of academic field experiences (SAFE): trainees report harassment and assault

Kathryn B H Clancy et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Little is known about the climate of the scientific fieldwork setting as it relates to gendered experiences, sexual harassment, and sexual assault. We conducted an internet-based survey of field scientists (N = 666) to characterize these experiences. Codes of conduct and sexual harassment policies were not regularly encountered by respondents, while harassment and assault were commonly experienced by respondents during trainee career stages. Women trainees were the primary targets; their perpetrators were predominantly senior to them professionally within the research team. Male trainees were more often targeted by their peers at the research site. Few respondents were aware of mechanisms to report incidents; most who did report were unsatisfied with the outcome. These findings suggest that policies emphasizing safety, inclusivity, and collegiality have the potential to improve field experiences of a diversity of researchers, especially during early career stages. These include better awareness of mechanisms for direct and oblique reporting of harassment and assault and, the implementation of productive response mechanisms when such behaviors are reported. Principal investigators are particularly well positioned to influence workplace culture at their field sites.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Proportion of survey respondents, by gender, who indicated that inappropriate or sexual comments occurred never, rarely, regularly, or frequently at their most recent or most notable field site (N).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Sources of Harassment (A) and Assault (B) for men and women respondents.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Visual representation of respondents to the survey, their experiences, and who were aware of, made use of, and were satisfied by mechanisms to report unwanted physical contact.
Each circle represents one survey respondent. Area for men and women is representative of their relative proportion of survey respondents. Eight respondents declined to provide a dichotomous gender designation and are not represented on this graph.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

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