Victims perceptions of traditional and cyber bullying, and the psychosocial correlates of their victimization

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Victims’ perceptions of traditional and cyberbullying, and the psychosocial correlates of their victimisation Marilyn Campbell1, Barbara Spears2, Phillip Slee3, Des Butler1 and Sally Kift1 1 Queensland University of Technology, 2University of South Australia, 3Flinders University. Australia Address for correspondence: A/Prof Marilyn Campbell MAPS School of Learning and Professional Studies Queensland University of Technology Kelvin Grove Campus Qld 4059 Australia Tel: +617 3138 3806 Fax: +617 3138 8265 Email ma.campbell@qut.edu.au Dr Marilyn Campbell is currently an associate professor at the Queensland University of Technology. She is a registered teacher and a registered psychologist. Previous to this Marilyn supervised school counsellors and has worked in infants, primary and secondary schools as a teacher, teacher-librarian and school counsellor. Her main clinical and research interests are the prevention and intervention of anxiety disorders in young people and the effects of bullying, especially cyberbullying in schools. Barbara Spears is Co-director of the Citizenship and Wellbeing Research Group in the Centre for Research in Education at the University of South Australia. She is the co-editor of The Impact of Technology on Relationships In Educational Settings and lead author of the Insights Into the Human Dimension of Covert Bullying report. She is a member of the National Technology and Wellbeing Roundtable, the National Centre Against Bullying and is a leading researcher with the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre. Phillip Slee is a professor in Human Development in the School of Education at Flinders University. He is a trained teacher and registered psychologist. He has published extensively in the field of child development, bullying, school violence, stress, and mental health. He has a particular interest in the practical and policy implications of his research. Details of some of his work is available on the web site http://www.caper.com.au Des Butler is a Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology where he served as Assistant Dean, Research (1997-2002). He was awarded his doctorate in 1996 for a study of legal liability for psychiatric injury caused by negligence and is the author or co-author of 16 books on topics including psychiatric injury caused by negligence, contract law and media law. He has been a chief investigator on Australian Research Council grants studying teachers’ duties to report suspected child abuse and cyberbullying in schools. Sally Kift is a Professor of Law at Queensland University of Technology, where she has served as Law Faculty Assistant Dean, Teaching & Learning (2001-2006) and QUT’s foundational 1 Director, First Year Experience (2006-2007). Sally is a national Teaching Award recipient, an Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Senior Fellow and an ALTC Discipline Scholar: Law. She has published widely in legal education and criminal law and is a chief investigator on Australian Research Council grants investigating cyberbullying in schools. 2 Victims’ perceptions of traditional and cyberbullying, and the psychosocial correlates of their victimisation It is well recognised that there are serious correlates for victims of traditional bullying. These have been shown to include increased levels of depression, anxiety and psychosomatic symptoms, in addition to often severe physical harm and even suicide. Bullied students also feel more socially ineffective; have greater interpersonal difficulties, together with higher absenteeism from school and lower academic competence. In the emerging field of cyberbullying many researchers have hypothesised a greater impact and more severe consequences for victims because of the 24/7 nature and the possibility of the wider audience with this form of bullying. However, to date there is scarce empirical evidence to support this. This study sought to compare victims’ perceptions of the harshness and impact of bullying by traditional and cyber means. The major findings showed that although students who had been victimised by traditional bullying reported that they felt their bullying was harsher, crueller and had more impact on their lives than those students who had been cyberbullied, the correlates of their mental health revealed that cyber victims reported significantly more social difficulties, higher anxiety levels and depression than traditional victims. The implications for school counsellors and mental health workers are discussed. Keywords: cyberbullying; bullying; anxiety; depression; perceptions; students 3 Introduction It is well established that traditional bullying has negative associations for both the students who are victims and those who bully. The correlates of traditional bullying for victims include increased levels of depression, anxiety and psychosomatic symptoms (Reijntjs, Kamphuis, Prinzie, and Telch 2010). While the direction of causality is still not established, some longitudinal studies in the last decade have shown that students who have been victimised by bullies are at greater future risk for somatic symptoms, anxiety and depression (Fekkes et al. 2006; Kim et al. 2006) and that young children with internalising problems such as withdrawal and anxiety-depression show an increased risk of being bullied (Arseneault et al. 2006, 2008). It has also been found in one longitudinal study (Carbone-Lopez, Esbensen, and Bick 2010) that there were different detrimental associations for girls and boys who had been bullied; girls who had been indirectly bullied increased their drug use whereas boys did not, and while victimised girls showed lower self-esteem this did not occur for boys. In a meta-analysis of 18 longitudinal studies, Reijntjs et al. (2010) found that there were significant associations between peer victimisation and subsequent changes in internalising problems, as well as vice versa: between internalising problems and subsequent changes in peer victimisation. Thus, it was shown that internalising problems function as both antecedents and consequences of peer victimisation. Although these longitudinal studies are not proof of a causal relationship between bullying victimisation and mental health problems, they do suggest a cyclical pattern of influence. As cyberbullying differs from traditional bullying due to the characteristics of the medium used to bully, it has been hypothesised that its effects could be more severe than those from traditional bullying (Campbell 2005). Depending on the particular circumstances, reasons for this may include a wider audience, anonymity of the bully, the more enduring nature of the written word and images, and the ability to reach the target at any time and in any place, including the target’s home. Furthermore, cyberbullies may feel emboldened because they cannot see their targets or their immediate responses and believe that, because of their anonymity, they will not be detected. It has been suggested that this anonymity may increase the intensity of the attacks and encourage them to continue for longer than they would otherwise do faceto-face (Conn 2004). 4 While it is true that cyberbullying can only threaten physical violence rather than inflict it, research has shown that verbal and psychological bullying may have more negative long term effects for the victims (Reid, Monsen, and Rivers 2004). To date, cross-sectional studies of cyberbullying victimisation have measured the impact in terms of emotional correlates, the subjective perception of impact and the association with mental health through relatively simple measures, identifying that students who have been cyberbullied do report increased emotional stress, compared with those not bullied. This has been shown where students were asked to self-report which specific emotion they had experienced when cyberbullied. In an Australian study of 548 cyberbullying victims, it was reported that students said they felt sad, annoyed, embarrassed and afraid (Price and Dalgleish 2010). This reflects what is known about the emotions associated with the earliest studies of traditional bullying (e.g., Rigby and Slee 1993). Anxiety, feeling bad about oneself and not trusting people have also been reported by cyber victims (Raskauskas 2010). Anger was the most dominant emotion for both cyber and traditional victims in a Spanish sample of 12-17-year-olds (Ortega et al. 2009). More severe cyberbullying however, was correlated with a profile of emotions labelled “alone, defenceless and depressed” (Ortega et al. p. 202). Cyberbullying can also have a subjective impact as measured by students’ perceptions of the harshness and impact of the bullying on them. Student interview data recently collected in Australia showed that many young people feel that cyberbullying is far more harmful than traditional bullying. Some reasons for this include: the finding that nearly 50% of those bullied indicated they did not know who was doing the bullying, many finding it hard to get away from the bullying which now followed them into their home, and more young people claiming they would bully others more often using technology and that they could be nastier than they could be face-to-face (Cross et al. 2009). Spears, Slee, Owens, and Johnson (2009) in their qualitative study of the impact and human dimension of covert and cyberbullying, found that cyberbullying in particular, evoked more than anger and sadness: viz strong, negative feelings and emotions and fear and concerns for safety; impacting on self; and dislocating and disrupting relationships (p. 194). However, Smith et al. (2008) found that students qualified the impact of cyberbullying according to the medium employed; they felt text messaging and email bullying had less of an impact than traditional bullying, but that bullying by pictures or video clips had a higher negative impact than traditional 5 bullying, suggesting a continuum of subjective impact overlapping both forms of bullying. However, the data from the three preceding studies were collected from all students and not only those who were victims of cyberbullying. So far as victims are concerned, as well as the potential for impacting on wellbeing, cyberbullying has been found to impact on their mental health in the form of depression (Gradinger, Strohmeier and Spiel 2009). Raskauskas (2010) found in a New Zealand study of secondary school students (11-18 years old) that cyber victims reported significantly more depressive symptoms than non-victims, with all victims reporting above the cut-off score of mild to moderate symptoms on the depression measure, and those experiencing cyberbullying more frequently having an increase in self-reported depressive symptoms. These findings were supported by an Australian and Swiss comparison of secondary school students where cybervictimisation was a significant predictor of depressive symptoms. In addition, this predictor was found to be over and above that of being victimised by traditional bullying (Perren et al. 2010). Students who have been cyberbullied have also been shown to have significantly lower self-esteem than those who were not cyberbullied (Patchin and Hinduja 2010). This study aimed to ascertain the perceptions of students who had been cyberbullied and their mental health. We hypothesised that those students who had been cyberbullied would perceive this bullying as harsher and more impactful on their lives than students who had been traditionally bullied. Additionally we examined the association of being bullied by any form with students’ mental health, as measured by their symptoms of social difficulty, depression, anxiety and stress. We hypothesised that cyberbullied students would report more elevated scores on these measures than traditionally bullied students. Method Participants Data came from a large-scale school-based survey of students’ bullying experiences; 3,112 students from grades 6 to 12 (1,572 girls 50.5 % and 1,535 boys 49.4%, 5 missing data) from 29 different schools, both government and non-government in three Australian states participated. The age range was from 9 to 19-years (M = 13.96, SD =1.87). Most students were able to access the Internet from their home (87.5%) and owned their own mobile (cell) phone (83.1%). 6 Procedure Ethical clearance was obtained from the universities involved and the various educational systems as well as the participating schools. Participation was voluntary and only students who wished to participate and had written parental consent took part. Approximately 30% of eligible students undertook the survey due to the active parental consent required. No data was available from students who did not return the parental consent form and therefore the demographics of non-responders were not available. The surveys were administered to students in their classrooms during class time by a research assistant, and standardised instructions were read out loud to participants prior to survey administration. There were between 15 and 25 students per testing session and each session took 30 to 45 minutes. The anonymity of the survey responses was emphasised verbally and in writing to the students. The survey was conducted between August and September 2009 (Term 3) when students had spent the previous 6-7 months of the school year together. Measures An anonymous, self-report paper-based survey was conducted, consisting of four sections. The first section asked for demographic information of gender, age and year of school, internet access at home and ownership of a mobile (cell) phone. The second section obtained information about cyberbullying experiences. The following definition of cyberbullying was provided (following recommendations of Solberg and Olweus (2003) that definitions improve the validity of responses). Cyberbullying is when one person or a group of people repeatedly try to hurt or embarrass another person, using their computer or mobile phone, to use power over them. With cyberbullying, the person bullying usually has some advantage over the person targeted, and it is done on purpose to hurt them, not like an accident or when friends tease each other. A filter question of “Have you been cyberbullied this year?” (since January this year) was used to establish cybervictimisation and a question “Have you cyberbullied someone this year” to establish cyberbullies and cyber bully-victims (the data on bullies will be published in another paper). If the students answered no they were directed to skip this section. If they answered yes, they were asked three questions concerning feelings when cyberbullied: (1) how did they feel (2) how harsh or cruel the cyberbullying experienced was considered to be and (3) how much of an impact the cyberbullying was thought to have had on their life. The first question used forced 7 choice from a set of emotions previously found in the literature. The following two questions were answered on a 5 point Likert scale from ‘’not at all harsh’ to ‘really harsh’, and from ‘no impact’ to ‘huge impact’. The third section asked about traditional or face-to-face bullying experiences mirroring the cyberbullying questions. The following definition of face-to-face bullying was provided. There are lots of different ways to bully someone. A bully wants to hurt the other person (it’s not an accident) and does it repeatedly and unfairly (the bullying has some advantage over the victim). Sometimes a group of students will bully another student. The fourth section of the survey used the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire to ascertain interpersonal difficulties; and the DASS-21 to ascertain mental health symptoms. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) (Goodman 1997) is a selfreport (11-17 years version) behavioural screening device that measures both positive and negative attributes. It has 25 items divided into five subscales: emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems and pro-social behaviour; each subscale has 5 items. All subscales except for pro-social behaviour are summed to obtain a total ‘difficulties’ score. For each item, participants indicate, on a three point scale, how things had been for them over the last six months. The reliabilities for the SDQ for the current study using Cronbach’s alpha were: 0.75 for emotional symptoms; 0.61 for conduct problems; 0.66 for hyperactivity/inattention 0.57 for peer relationship problems; 0.75 for pro-social behaviour and 0.82 for the total difficulties scale. The Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale (DASS-21) (Lovibond and Lovibond 1995) is a 42-item self-report measure. We used a short form of 21 items, with three 7item subscales of depression, anxiety and stress. Participants rate the extent to which they experienced each state over the past week on a 4-point Likert rating scale. Summed scores can be calculated for each subscale, and a total score obtained by summing all 21 items. The scores for all items were doubled to ensure consistency with the original 42 item version of the scale. The alpha coefficients obtained for the current study were 0.90 for Depression; 0.85 for Anxiety; 0.87 for Stress, and 0.95 for the Total scale. 8 The survey ended with a list of counselling services available in the area for any students who became distressed or wanted more information on bullying. Results Students self-reported whether they had been traditionally or cyberbullied and traditionally or cyberbullied others by a filter question of yes or no during that school year: This resulted in six groups of victims: 16.1% (500) classified as traditional victims only (Group 1) and 4.5% (139) as cyber victims only (Group 2), 4.5% (140) both cyber and traditional victims (Group 3), 4.7% (147) as traditional bully-victims (Group 4), 1.5% (48) as cyber bully-victims (Group 5), and 5.4% (169) both cyber and traditional bully-victims(Group 6) (See Table 1). Insert Table 1 about here Gender and age There was no significant difference in gender in the traditional victim only group (G1) or the traditional “bully-victim” group (G4). There was a significant difference in gender, with more girls than boys in the cyber victims only group (G2) (t (3105) = 2.65, p < .01) ; the combined traditional and cyber victims group (G3) (t (3105) = 5.24, p < .001) and the combined traditional and cyber “bully-victims” (G6) (t (3105) = -2.14, p < .05). However, more boys than girls were classified as cyber “bully-victims” (G5) (t (3105) = 2.41, p < .05). There were age differences found for the following groups; traditional victims (r=--.135, p
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Victims’ perceptions of traditional and cyber-bullying, and the psychosocial correlates of
their victimization
Question 1
The study sought to establish the perceptions of students who had been victims of cyberbullying and their mental health. The authors hypothesized that these students who were victims
of cyber bullying would consider cyber-bullying to be harsher as well as more harmful to their
individual lives compared to students exposed to traditional bullying. The study also examined
the association of students been bullied by any form with their mental health evaluated by
symptoms such as stress, anxiety, depression, or social difficulties. Hyp...


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