What is actually sexual harassment at school? An ethnographic study among middle-, high school-, and senior high school students

Sexual harassment among peers is a widespread problem at schools, with serious consequences for young people’s health and well-being.

Despite this, peer sexual harassment at school is an overlooked phenomenon in research, especially when it comes to examining it from the students´ own perspective.

The proposed project aims to understand peer sexual harassment based on how it is expressed in students´ everyday lives at school and how students themselves experience and describe it.

This 4-year project constitutes an internationally unique ethnographic study, building on field studies at schools and focus group interviews with students.

From a developmental contextual- and gender-perspective, three substudies will be conducted, each focusing on middle school-, secondary school-, and upper secondary school students.

Together with our ongoing longitudinal quantitative research project PRISE in which we study peer sexual harassment among students grades 4-9 through questionnaires, the proposed project constitutes a unique quant+QUAL approach of studying peer sexual harassment at school.

The proposed project has the potential to address yet unanswered questions regarding peer sexual harassment expressions and processes, and how students of different ages interpret, understand and describe these complex, yet every day, situations.

The knowledge gained from this project will help to inform interventions to promote young people’s right of schooling free from sexual harassment.