Elaboration and validation of an Instrument to Identify Sexual Harassment of Medical Students (MESSHII)

Abstract

Introduction: Sexual harassment is a reality that permeates hierarchical and gender power relations, and although noticeable in the medical and academic environment, it is considered a silenced violence that causes organic and psychological harm, with great consequences for the victim. Objective: To develop and validate an instrument to identify the occurrence of sexual harassment in medical students. Method: This instrument was developed, after reviewing the literature on the subject, with Likert-type responses at five option levels, which has two parts: the first with information on the participants’ sociodemographic and academic characteristics and the second containing 21 items grouped into three dimensions: forms of harassment, facilitating factors and identification of the harasser in the academic environment and in hospital practice. Semantic and content validation was carried out by consensus of experts and FACE validation was carried out by a focal group of 12 students, two from each year of the course. To verify reliability, the instrument was sent to 1,146 medical students once a week for four weeks, with 350 (30.5%) students responding to the Test following the recommendation for psychometric studies. After 15 days, the Retest was started with the 350 Test respondents, following the same submission chronology to verify stability. In the Retest, 69 responses were obtained. The Excel program version 16 was used to create the database and the Stata statistical program version 13 was used for the analysis. The instrument was applied online using the LimeSurvey free software. Results: The reliability of the instrument was evidenced by a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.8163 and 0.7826 for Test and Retest, respectively. For the verification of stability, the Stuart-Maxwell test was used, which showed a value of p = 0.126 and the weighted Kappa, where the result of all 21 assertions are contained in the confidence interval, demonstrating the homogeneity of the distribution of the average scores between the Test and the Retest. Conclusions: The validated instrument proved to be reliable and stable and can be used in medical schools to identify sexual harassment in medical students.