Evaluating the Effectiveness of Interventions to Prevent and Address Sexual Harassment

Rising awareness of and increased attention to sexual harassment has resulted in momentum to implement sexual harassment prevention efforts in higher education institutions. Work on preventing sexual harassment is an area that has recently garnered a lot of attention, especially around education and programs that go beyond the standard anti-sexual harassment trainings often used to comply with legal requirements. On April 20-21, 2021, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted the workshop Developing Evaluation Metrics for Sexual Harassment Prevention Efforts. The workshop explored approaches and strategies for evaluating and measuring the effectiveness of sexual harassment interventions being implemented at higher education institutions and research and training sites, in order to assist institutions in transforming promising ideas into evidence-based best practices. Workshop participants also addressed methods, metrics, and measures that could be used to evaluate sexual harassment prevention efforts that lead to change in the organizational climate and culture and/or a change in behavior among community members. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.