COMMENTARY Improving the measurement of sexual harassment climate Caren Goldberg 1 and Afra Ahmad 2, * 1 Bowie State University, Caren Goldberg, Ph.D., LLC and 2 George Mason University *Corresponding author. Email: aahmad14@gmu.edu Meta-analytic research indicates that harassment experiences are more strongly correlated with harassment climate than with any other predictor of harassment (Willness, Steel, & Lee, 2007). Medeiros and Griffith (2019) highlight the significance of climate in their proposed framework for improving sexual harassment and assault training. However, we argue from research and practical experience that the current measure of harassment climate needs to be elaborated and extended to improve its practical utility. In this commentary, we provide a brief overview of the current ha- rassment measure, identify its limitations, and propose solutions to gain a better understanding of the situational factors that predict sexual harassment training effectiveness and, ultimately, sexual harassment experiences. Brief background of current measurement of harassment climate Extant measures of harassment climate have been based on Hulin, Fitzgerald, and Drasgow’s (1996) pioneering work in this area. Their measure and subsequent formulations of it are collectively referred to as Organizational Tolerance for Sexual Harassment (OTSH). Scholars who have relied upon the OTSH have reported consistently high scale reliabilities, with alphas ranging from .88 to .95 (c.f., Bergman, Langout, Palmieri, Cortina, & Fitzgerald, 2002; Goldberg, Rawski, & Perry, in press; Kath, Swody, Magley, Bunk, & Gallus, 2009; Williams, Fitzgerald, & Drasgow, 1999). Despite the soundness of the item content and the psychometric properties of the scale, a closer look suggests that the scale may not fully capture the knowledge we have gained, as a field, in the 20 years since it was first developed. Gaps and solutions to improve the measurement of sexual harassment climate In this section, we call for researchers to consider whether the shared-perception view of OTSH is the most meaningful analytical approach to use. Although scholars have used different variants of OTSH, the scale typically comprises seven to nine items that assess employees’ perceptions of the extent to which organizations (a) pursue preventative actions, (b) thoroughly investigate complaints, (c) enforce penalties against harassers, and, more generally, (d) allow harassers to get away with their behavior. We identify the limitations in the measurement of each of these subcomponents and offer insights into its improvement. OTSH is considered to be a climate measure (i.e., shared perception). How a person perceives a behavior matters more than the intent of that behavior, and if everyone agrees that the organiza- tion does not take sexual harassment seriously, then there is likely little concern about whether the perception is accurate. However, in many organizations, harassment is something of a well-known secret, where such behaviors are seen as harmless, “locker room talk,” to everyone but the victims. © Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology 2019. Industrial and Organizational Psychology (2019), 12, 64–67 doi:10.1017/iop.2019.10 https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/iop.2019.10 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 198.252.38.116, on 19 May 2019 at 02:36:52, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at