TY - JOUR
T1 - Individual and Contextual Predictors of Cyberbullying
T2 - The Influence of Children's Provictim Attitudes and Teachers' Ability to Intervene
AU - Christian Elledge, L.
AU - Williford, Anne
AU - Boulton, Aaron J.
AU - DePaolis, Kathryn J.
AU - Little, Todd D.
AU - Salmivalli, Christina
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2013/5
Y1 - 2013/5
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Adolescence
KW - Cyberbullying
KW - Provictim attitudes
KW - Teacher intervention
KW - Youth
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84876141049&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10964-013-9920-x
DO - 10.1007/s10964-013-9920-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 23371005
AN - SCOPUS:84876141049
VL - 42
SP - 698
EP - 710
JO - Journal of Youth and Adolescence
JF - Journal of Youth and Adolescence
SN - 0047-2891
IS - 5
ER -