EthnoPRISE: An ethnographic study of peer sexual harassment among students in middle-, junior high- and high school
Short description
This 4-year long project aims to understand sexual harassment between peers based on how it is expressed in students’ everyday lives at school and how students themselves describe these situations. EthnoPRISE constitutes an internationally unique ethnographic study based on field studies in schools and focus group interviews with students. Three sub-studies will be conducted, each focusing on middle-, junior high- and high school, respectively. This project has the potential to address unanswered questions regarding sexual harassment among students, and how students of different ages understand and interpret these situations.
Project description
In our ongoing research project PRISE, we have found that around half of the students in fourth grade have at some point experienced some form of sexual harassment (e.g., being called something sexual against their will) by a peer. We also know that as students get older, these situations often become more common. However, there is a lack of research investigating students' own interpretations of the concept “sexual harassment” and on how children and adolescents perceive situations that are defined as sexual harassment by the adult world and the scientific literature. To understand the high prevalence of sexual harassment in schools and to address the issue, more knowledge is needed about these situations, both from the voices of children and adolescents themselves and through observing students’ everyday lives at school.
In the EthnoPRISE project, we aim to understand peer sexual harassment based on how it manifests among students in school, and how the students themselves experience and describe it. The project is a further development of our programmatic research on sexual harassment among young people and involves an internationally unique ethnographic study based on field studies (a total of 4-5 months) in schools and focus group interviews with students. We will conduct fieldwork and interview students in grades five, eight, and in the second year of high school to examine any differences or similarities in how peer sexual harassment is expressed, interpreted, and managed by the students according to their developmental stages.
Our objective is for the project to contribute to a greater understanding of the complexity, as well as the everyday nature, surrounding peer sexual harassment in schools, and for its results to inform effective and developmentally appropriate measures to counteract sexual harassment between peers in schools.
Researchers
Kristina Holmqvist Gattario, Project leader
Carolina Lunde
Therése Skoog
Robert Thornberg, Linköping University
Hannah Hallén
