ERIC Number: EJ1000530
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013-May
Pages: 13
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0047-2891
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Individual and Contextual Predictors of Cyberbullying: The Influence of Children's Provictim Attitudes and Teachers' Ability to Intervene
Elledge, L. Christian; Williford, Anne; Boulton, Aaron J.; DePaolis, Kathryn J.; Little, Todd D.; Salmivalli, Christina
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, v42 n5 p698-710 May 2013
Electronic social communication has provided a new context for children to bully and harass their peers and it is clear that cyberbullying is a growing public health concern in the US and abroad. The present study examined individual and contextual predictors of cyberbullying in a sample of 16, 634 students in grades 3-5 and 7-8. Data were obtained from a large cluster-randomized trial of the KiVa antibullying program that occurred in Finland between 2007 and 2009. Students completed measures at pre-intervention assessing provictim attitudes (defined as children's beliefs that bullying is unacceptable, victims are acceptable, and defending victims is valued), perceptions of teachers' ability to intervene in bullying, and cyberbullying behavior. Students with higher scores on provictim attitudes reported lower frequencies of cyberbullying. This relationship was true for individual provictim attitudes as well as the collective attitudes of students within classrooms. Teachers' ability to intervene assessed at the classroom level was a unique, positive predictor of cyberbullying. Classrooms in which students collectively considered their teacher as capable of intervening to stop bullying had higher mean levels of cyberbullying frequency. Our findings suggest that cyberbullying and other indirect or covert forms of bullying may be more prevalent in classrooms where students collectively perceive their teacher's ability to intervene in bullying as high. We found no evidence that individual or contextual effects were conditional on age or gender. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Descriptors: Public Health, Bullying, Foreign Countries, Predictor Variables, Internet, Victims, Student Attitudes, Intervention, Computer Mediated Communication, Context Effect, Teacher Role, Scores, Attitude Measures, Age Differences, Gender Differences, Program Effectiveness, Elementary School Students
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Finland
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A