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I'm writing a text about harrassment at the workplace, and about what measures the workplace should take in case of suspected harassment. Now I'm wondering what to call the process in which the workplace looks into the alledged harassment – should I use "enquiry" or "investigation"? I have tried googling different phrases with "investigation" together with "harassment" and "enquiry" together with "harassment" respectively, on British sites, but I get too few hits to be able to draw any conclusions. Nor do my dictionaries help much. So, I'm hoping you can help me :)

Also: what do you call the people conducting the enquiry/investigation? Does "investigator" work?

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Both are reasonable. There is a slight difference of use.

An investigation is

the act or process of examining a crime, problem, statement, etc. carefully, especially to discover the truth:

Whereras an inquiry is:

an official process to discover the facts about something bad that has happened.

If the aim is to find out who committed harassment and what they did, that is an investigation. On the other hand if you are looking at "why" harassment occurred, that would be an inquiry.

If you are talking about a process in which the managers act like police, that is an investigation. If the managers act like professors of sociology, that is an inquiry.

(definitions from Cambridge dictionaries)

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  • OMG – this is such a good answer!! Thank you so much!! I checked Cambridge dictionaries (and a few others) myself, before I posted in here, but I failed to understand the difference. Your explanation makes so much sense though!! Again: thank you, from the bottom of my heart!!
    – Gerda
    Commented Dec 9, 2022 at 23:33
  • Oh, forgot: what about "investigators" – can I use that in the case of an investigation, even if the "investigators" are managers at the workplace rather than the police?
    – Gerda
    Commented Dec 9, 2022 at 23:36
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    The managers would be the investigators.
    – James K
    Commented Dec 10, 2022 at 3:31
  • Excellent – thanks again!
    – Gerda
    Commented Dec 10, 2022 at 19:24

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