Comparison of Attitudes towards Help Seeking between Schoolchildren with and without Experience of Cyberbullying

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• 作者：Loreta Gustainiene ; ^{l.gustainiene@gmail.com" class="auth_mail" title="E-mail the corresponding author} ; Dovile Valiune
• 关键词：cyberbullying ; adolescents ; help seeking attitudes
• 刊名：Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：9 October 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：205
• 期：Complete
• 页码：391-395
• 全文大小：236 K

文摘

Scientists agree that cyberbullying is a very relevant problem among adolescents (Pilkauskaite-Valickiene, 2009). Cyberbullying is unique to other more traditional forms of bullying because of the perpetrator's anonymity, ability to harass their victim 24 hours a day and it happens often outside school (Smith, 2008; Johnson, 2009). Cyberbullying is shown to be related to low self-esteem, stress, anti-social behaviour, lower academic performance, depressiveness, suicidal thoughts (Patchin, Hinduja, 2010; Faryadi, 2011; Schneider, 2012; Sticca, 2013). Peers and parents were identified as key sources of help dealing with cyberbullying (Spears, 2015). Therefore, the right attitudes towards help seeking should influence the actions against cyberbullying. Nevertheless, relatively little is known about the differences in attitudes towards help seeking among schoolchildren with and without the experience of cyberbullying. Purpose of Study – to compare the attitudes towards help seeking attitudes among students who experienced cyberbullying and schoolchildren who did not.

Methods

Cyberbullying at school and help-seeking attitudes were measured by a questionnaire composed according to literature data. 357 adolescents from Lithuania participated in the study (152 boys and 205 girls), aged 12 to 18 (mean age 15.36, SD = 2). 90 schoolchildren have reported being cyberbullied.

Findings and Results

The results showed that attitudes towards help seeking were statistically significantly different among boys who were harassed by cyberbullying and boys who did not. The attitudes towards help seeking behaviour statistically significantly differed among girls who had been harassed by cyberbullying and girls who had not.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Schoolchildren who had suffered from cyberbullying had worse attitudes towards help seeking behaviour as compared to the ones who had not experienced cyberbullying. Therefore, schoolchildren should be taught to change their attitudes toward help seeking if they encounter cyberbullying.