Development and Evaluation of Harassment Prevention Materials to Promote a Sense of Ownership in Top Athletes: Teaching Materials for Instruction in Health and Physical Education and Club Activities*

Abstract

As harassment, such as power harassment and sexual harassment, in competitive sports has become a serious social problem in Japan in recent years, there is a need to develop educational approaches to protect the integrity of athletes. This study developed educational materials to promote awareness of harassment issues among top athletes and verify the effectiveness of these materials. To help athletes understand their behavior more objectively and to be more aware of what might be perceived as harassment, teaching materials on “sexual harassment” and “power harassment” situations were developed to educate them on perception differences. Then, a training session was conducted with top athletes to evaluate the teaching materials, and pre- and post-questionnaire surveys were conducted for individual and group events. This analysis revealed significant differences in the mean scores for “awareness of sexual harassment and power harassment” in both individual and group events. In addition, significant differences were found in “relevance of sexual harassment and power harassment to oneself” in the individual category. This suggests that these materials had raised athletes’ awareness of the parties involved in harassment issues.