Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 43, February 2015, Pages 167-182
Computers in Human Behavior

Cyberbullying: The hidden side of college students

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.045Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Cyberbullying aggressors and victims tend to be men.

  • There are different aspects regarding aggression that are experienced by victims.

  • Intimidation acts are quite similar to those practiced in the context of bullying.

  • Image appropriation is an indirect form of harassment, specific to cyberbullying.

  • College students underrated their involvement in acts of cyberbullying.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate how university students perceive their involvement in the cyberbullying phenomenon, and its impact on their well-being. Thus, this study presents a preliminary approach of how college students’ perceived involvement in acts of cyberbullying can be measured. Firstly, Exploratory Factor Analysis (N = 349) revealed a unidimensional structure of the four scales included in the Cyberbullying Inventory for College Students. Then, Item Response Theory (N = 170) was used to analyze the unidimensionality of each scale and the interactions between participants and items. Results revealed good item reliability and Cronbach’s α for each scale. Results also showed the potential of the instrument and how college students underrated their involvement in acts of cyberbullying. Additionally, aggression types, coping strategies and sources of help to deal with cyberbullying were identified and discussed. Lastly, age, gender and course-related issues were considered in the analysis. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed.

Introduction

School violence is a contemporary topic of discussion and one of the main causes of concern of students and professionals of the educational system. According to the literature, violence in educational settings has increased (Li, 2006), with aggravated consequences for the teaching and learning processes (Glover, Gough, Johnson, & Cartwright, 2000), as well as the socio-affective development of students (Clarke & Kiselica, 1997). Furthermore, school is the place where adolescents spend the majority of their time. Therefore, it is a critical arena of social support and academic development. Some of the literature has shown that students in schools with higher levels of bullying perform worse academically. (Strøm, Thoresen, Wentzel-Larsen, & Dyb, 2013). This type of violence affects many children and teenagers, at school and at home with the expansion and development of information and communication technologies (ICT). This insecurity is present at different grade levels, including university contexts and therefore, research involving the different forms of bullying is crucial in order to provide a better understanding of how it occurs, how students can deal with it and ultimately, how it can be prevented.

As ICT have increasingly been incorporated into schools because they foster creative and autonomous ways of communicating and interacting, the risks and dangers associated with them also increase (Li, 2006). To specify, the rapid development of ICT (e.g. Internet and cell phones) has created more opportunities for bullies (Li, 2006, Li, 2008) in the sense that the increased use or misuse of these electronic devices among teenagers (Slonje & Smith, 2008), has originated a new form of bullying (Beran & Li, 2007), that is, cyberbullying.

Cyberbullying has a considerable impact on the lives of children and teenagers, considering it emerges at the elementary level and continues to higher education (Hinduja & Patchin, 2009) with increasing frequency and severity in and out of schools (Li, 2006). In light of these issues and because cyberbullying entails negative psychological and physical consequences that may affect interpersonal relationships (Anderson & Sturm, 2007), research should focus on the perceptions students have of their involvement in situations of cyberbullying, along with its associated dangers.

Firstly, this study aims to understand how college students view and report their involvement in situations of cyberbullying. Hence, we present an inventory which could allow us to achieve this objective through the interpretation of its structure. We used Item Response Theory (IRT), which allowed us to calibrate our participants and items on a common scale (DeMars, 2010, Embretson, 1996). This type of measurement presents an analysis of the interactions between people and items, enabling the interpretation of the variables in question. What’s more, the interpretations of items in which participants have a higher or lower probability of dominating, have an important diagnostic convenience for our study, along with other group-related ratings, which we consider later.

To complement our first analysis, the present study also explores the dynamics of cyberbullying in order to provide a better understanding of how college students view this phenomena from different perspectives (the roles of the victim, aggressor and observer of victims and/or aggressors). We also consider different aspects that are associated with cyberbullying, such as intimidation and image appropriation that may affect the lives of college students. Moreover, with the analyses presented in this study, we provide insights regarding the means through which cyberbullying occurs (i.e. type of ICT used), as well as the most common types of occurrence in Portuguese college settings.

Section snippets

From bullying to cyberbullying

Educational contexts are not free of violence and aggression. This type of violence is generally called bullying, referring to behaviors of abuse of power among peers with the intent of harming others in a prolonged manner (Olweus, 1993). Several authors (Olweus, 1993, Smith and Brain, 2000) have defined bullying behavior and some of its characteristics. Essentially, there are three important aspects to consider, namely, the intention to physically, psychologically or socially harm the victim,

Participants

Initially, we had 12 students participate in an interview that lead to the construction of the inventory. These students were between 19 and 24 years of age. Later, we used a convenience sample of 519 undergraduate college students (N = 349 in our exploratory study and N = 170 in our IRT analysis). From the University of Lisbon, students (N = 349) attended the Psychology (43.2%) and Science Education (24.1%) courses, whereas students (N = 170) from the Polytechnic Institute of Portalegre attended

Cyberbullying Inventory for College Students – exploratory evidence

We used IBM SPSS 22.0 and FACTOR 9.2 to interpret the internal structure of the four scales. Table 1 shows the correlations among all variables for each scale, as well as the descriptive statistics.

We used polychoric correlations, as suggested in the literature, when univariate distributions of ordinal items are asymmetric for polytomous items (Brown, 2006, Muthén and Kaplan, 1985, Muthén and Kaplan, 1992). We tested the data with the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) and the Bartlett’s Test of

Discussion

This investigation focused on the incidence of cyberbullying in undergraduate college students with the main objective of understanding this relatively new phenomenon in an understudied population. Cyberbullying has been mainly investigated in adolescence (Kowalski & Limber, 2007). However, there is the need to verify the impact of this phenomenon in older populations, and to better understand it with the objective of underlining some strategies to prevent it. This investigation also presented

Implications and conclusions

This study presented an instrument that has the potential to assess cyberbullying in higher education contexts. Furthermore, the analyses made with the CICS helped us understand how college students perceive cyberbullying. Specifically, we found that students underrated their involvement in acts of cyberbullying, which indicates that one’s involvement in acts of cyberbullying is in fact, a hidden side of college students. So as to fight cyberbullying there needs to be systemic and conjugated

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank to the research team of the project Cyberbullying: A diagnosis of the situation in Portugal.

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