Improving Army unit and command culture would help curb sexual assault and sexual harassment in those units, a new Rand Corporation study said. Units and bases with the highest rates of assault and harassment should be targeted with prevention efforts, the authors wrote.

The study, requested by the Army in February, featured interviews with more than 1,500 women and 900 men who had reported sexual harassment or sexual assault in a 2018 survey.

Here are some of the findings and recommendations:

• Men and women both face forms of sexual harassment, but women are more likely to face “serious” or “persistent” harassment.
• The Army should study the differences between those bases and the ones with unexpectedly low risk “to understand protective factors,” the Rand study said. More than a third of the women who reported sexual harassment or assault in the 2018 study were based at the five highest-risk installations.
• Women assigned to groups with a heavy civilian workforce seem to be less vulnerable to sexual assault than those working with a large proportion of combat arms soldiers.
• For men and women, the perpetrators tend to be “male service members, especially enlisted members,” and the actions typically take place during duty hours.
• “It is possible to target prevention efforts using different risk characteristics but still use the same training content insofar as it focuses on types of behaviors that are common across all installations, regardless of risk,” the authors wrote.

Army photo by Capt. Tania Donovan