Exploring high school learners’ perceptions of bullying

Reactions of adolescent cyber bystanders toward different victims of cyberbullying: the role of parental rearing behaviors

BACKGROUND

Group-based situations are common settings for cyberbullying, making bystander responses crucial in combating this issue. This study investigated how adolescent bystanders respond to various victims, including family members, friends, teachers, and celebrities. This study also examined how different parenting styles influenced children's cyber bystander involvement.

METHODS

This study employed data from a cross-sectional school survey covering 1,716 adolescents aged 13-18 years from public and vocational schools in China collected in 2022. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to measure demographic characteristics, cyberbullying experiences, and parental rearing behaviors in predicting bystander reactions.

RESULTS

The findings showed that middle school students preferred to "ask for help" while high school students tended to choose "call the police" when witnessing cyberbullying incidents. Bystanders growing up with parental rejection and overprotection, having previous cyberbullying victimization experiences, where the victims were disliked by them, exhibited fewer defensive reactions.

CONCLUSIONS

This study has implications for future research and practices involving parental involvement in cyber bystander interventions, which could provide implications for future practice in designing specific intervention programs for cyberbullying bystander behavior. Future research and interventions against cyberbullying may provide individualized training including parents' positive parenting skills and parent-child interactions.

Prevalence of bullying in secondary schools in Port Harcourt

Background: School bullying is a global problem involving a high proportion of students worldwide. However, its prevalence and types in secondary schools in Port Harcourt is not yet known.

Objective: This study aimed to determine the prevalence and types of bullying in secondary schools in Port Harcourt.

Subjects: A total of 1160 students from six secondary schools in Port Harcourt comprised the sample.

Materials and methods: This was a cross-sectional school-based study conducted in Port Harcourt in March 2014. Two mixed schools, two all-boys schools, and two all-girls schools were selected using purposive sampling technique. Stratified random sampling technique, by class strata (senior secondary 1, 2 and 3) was used to select 1160 students from the six schools. A 22-item self-administered questionnaire adapted from a previous study was modified and used in this study. The questions covered the prevalence, type of bullying, and socio-demographic data. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 20 (IBM SPSS Incorporated, Chicago, IL, USA).

Results: About 82.2% reported being victims of bullying, whereas 64.9% reported being bullies. About 9.7% and 11.8% were neither bullies nor bullied, respectively. Bullying was significantly higher in the all-boys (90.8%) and all-girls (82.9%) schools than in the mixed schools (73.5%), p=0.000. More males were victims (53.4%) and bullies (53.3%) but more females (55.4%) were bully-victims. The most common (57.5%) type of bullying was physical bullying.

Conclusion: The rate of bullying was found to be very high in secondary schools in Port Harcourt.