Duration of Sexual Harassment and Generalized Harassment in the Workplace Over Ten Years: Effects on Deleterious Drinking Outcomes

Although harassment in the workplace has been linked to deleterious drinking outcomes, researchers have yet to examine the long-term effects of chronic workplace harassment. During a 10-year longitudinal mail survey, university employees (N = 2,265) were administered measures of sexual harassment, generalized workplace harassment, and problematic drinking. Using growth mixture modeling, two latent classes of workplace harassment emerged: infrequent and chronic. Demographic characteristics (gender, age, and race) predicted the shape of the trajectories and likelihood of class membership. As hypothesized, membership in the chronic harassment classes was linked to future problematic drinking, even after controlling for previous drinking.