Abstract
Purpose : Sexual abuse especially in younger group have been growing. This study was performed to propose the fundamental data for developing early education program to prevent damage from sexual harassment in elementary school students. Method : Questionnaire survey on cognitions and experiences about sexual harassment was done on 3125 elementary school students from seven elementary schools in Busan area from January to March, 2002. Data analysis was done with SPSS (ver 10.0). Results : Though 82% of the students have ever herd about sexual harassment previously, but self assessment of 'well-known' was only 5%. About 40% of them have ever experienced audio-visual sexual materials mainly through PC (18%), media (14%), etc. And, 60% of them have ever educated about sexual harassment. In cognitions, they agreed 'unwanted touch', 'intentional showing his (her) own body', 'send lewd mails and pictures', but disagreed 'ask massage from aged', 'gaudy joke' as one of sexual harassment. In attitudes, 'no response', 'defense with friends and family', 'express unpleasantness apparently' were desirable pattern, instead, 'his (her) own responsibility', 'problem only between person concerned', 'neglect is the best way' were undesirable. About 24% of them have ever experienced at least one of the fifteen types of sexual harassment with major types of lewd mails pictures (11%), hugging (5%), ask massage (4.7%) and unwanted touch (3.3%). The experience by gender was higher in girls (25.0%) than boys (22.4%) with no statistical significance. The mean level of cognition and attitude out of one hundred was $70.3{\pm}28.1$ and $73.5{\pm}15.9$, respectively. The mean frequency of experience was $0.4{\pm}1.1$ times. The level of cognition and attitude was higher in girls, 6th graders, and in ever educated group (p<0.001). Conclusions : The cognition level of elementary school students about sexual harassment assessed considerable. And, they also experienced several types of sexual harassment, though not too much. Therefore, compatible education program let them able to protect themselves from sexual harassment should be developed and applied even in early school age.
