Imagine if you could document every time someone groped you in a nightclub.

It’s a scenario all too familiar for any woman who has been clubbing: the ‘handsy’ guy who gets too close for comfort without permission.

‘Grab, grope and grind’ behaviour is rampant in the nightclub scene, even in the age of #Metoo where now, more than ever before, this would be unacceptable in workplaces, campuses and most other places we find ourselves.

As part of a campaign for greater respect, Schweppes Brazil, along with ad agency Ogilvy, set out to measure the amount of sexual harassment women have to contend with in nightclubs.

They built a dress with sensors that detect every time a woman is touched to help measure how often she is harassed and have used the shocking results to encourage men to change their behaviour towards women.

The resulting ad claims 86 per cent of Brazilian women had been harassed in nightclubs, but many men don’t see it as a problem.

In one night, three women took turns to wear the high neck, long sleeved dress into a nightclub while researchers watch on via cameras that transmit back in real time to a bank of television screens that track their every move and detect unwanted touches.

In just under four hours the women were touched 157 times, more than 40 times per hour.

Edith Cowan University’s Aimee-Rose Wrightson-Hester, who has been researching nightclub behaviour as part of her PhD, applauded the Schweppes ad for drawing attention to the issue.

“I think it was quite a good way to show the public that these behaviours are occurring and people are being touched when they don’t want to be or just being touched a lot in general,” she said.

“It was quite nice that Schweppes was involved, an industry leader is taking charge of what is going on in clubs.”

In her research Ms Wrightson-Hester surveyed 381 Australians aged 18-30, asking their attitudes to various scenarios which included: a man trying to kiss a girl after he buys her a drink, a girl grabbing a man’s bum and a guy who starts grinding on a girl and touching her body, and when the woman tries to move away not stopping.

While she found women were not the only victims of harassment, she found men were significantly more likely to initiate unwanted contact.

Ms Wrightson-Hester’s research also uncovered a surprising double standard.

While both men and women found that behaviour unacceptable, both genders were more forgiving if women were the perpetrators rather than men.

“Because nightclubs are places that people go to either find a sexual partner or get away from the rules of real life, it is not clear in a nightclub setting what is OK and what isn’t OK in regards to sexual behaviour,” she said.

Which meant bad behaviour was also less likely to be called out, even if people thought it was out of order.

“Even if they themselves don’t think it is OK, they are unsure what everyone else in those places think so they just go by ‘well, if I see it happen then it must be OK’, Ms Wrightson-Hester said.

“So, they are not going to feel empowered enough to speak up or make a scene.”

Ms Wrightson-Hester, who said she had also been a victim of nightclub harassment, said research that goes back to the mid to late 90s suggests behaviour has not changed much.

“I’ve had conversations with people who are older who have said I can’t believe this still happens, this happened when I used to go out clubbing,” she said.

“People should be able to go there and still have fun and if people want to consensually grab each other’s bums then that’s fine, it’s not a workplace so it isn’t somewhere where all of those rules should be in place.

“But there should be a line where the majority of people are happy to be there. At the moment it seems there are a lot of people who are just putting up with this behaviour when actually they really don’t like it.”

While her research did not examine the role of alcohol in nightclub behaviour, other studies have found that it is not necessarily drunk people who step over the line of what is acceptable, rather drunk people are often the target.

The next stage of her research will examine how people think alcohol affects the way people act in nightclubs and how it affects their perceptions of what is OK and what is not OK.