Tag Archives: research

Cyberbullying Rates Across the World, and the Role of Culture

Article posted by Sameer in February 17, 2011 at 11:44 pm.

(7 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Being Americans, we tend to focus a lot of attention on offline and online peer harassment here at home. It is interesting, though, to consider the cross-cultural research that has been done on traditional bullying and think about whether they parallel similar trends in cyberbullying across various countries. From a recent International Journal of Public Health article, this figure depicts bullying rates among boys aged 11, 13, and 15 years of age from the 2005-2006 school year across 40 countries:

…while this figure focuses in on girls in that age range:

We are not aware of any major cross-cultural studies involving cyberbullying, but it is interesting to look at some of the prevalence rates in specific countries across the world. We’ve been working with David Burt over at Microsoft Trustworthy Computing, and he dug up most of the following statistics:

European Union
6% of Internet-using teens ages 9-16 reported they had been sent nasty or hurtful messages online, while 3% reported they sent such messages to others
Risks and safety on the internet: The perspective of European children, EU Kids Online, Summer 2010.

Belgium
34.3% of Belgian teenagers have been bullied via internet or mobile phone
European Commission Survey, Nov. 2009.

Poland
52% of Polish Internet users aged 12-17 have been exposed to abuse on the Web or via mobile phones
European Commission Survey, Nov. 2009.

Germany
14.1% of students also experience the kinds of incidents (harassment, denigration, outing & trickery and exclusion) that constitute cyberbullying
Cyberbullying in Germany, Psychology Science Quarterly, 2009.

Japan
Ten percent of high school students said they have been harassed through e-mails, websites or blogs
Survey by the Hyogo Prefectual Board of Education, 2007 (Citied in Reuters article).

Spain
Between 25% and 29% of all teenagers have been bullied via their mobile phone or the internet over the past year
University of Valencia (UV), 2010.

South Korea
A survey of 272 students at four South Korean universities found that three-fourths knew a victim of cyber bullying and more than half knew a cyber bully.
University of South Florida, 2010

Sometimes I am quick to blame the media in our own country for glamorizing verbal and physical violence in different ways – by adults and teens alike. That said, the frequencies of real-world bullying in the aforementioned charts and those of cyberbullying across a spattering of European and Eastern countries seem to demonstrate that these problem behaviors occur with pretty similar regularity. While it is easy to scapegoat the media because some of what we see these days shocks our collective conventional conscience, I feel we must conceive of peer harassment as a problem with human nature rather than national origin.

Justin and I will continue to dialogue about this in the weeks ahead – we’d love to hear your perspectives on how strong an influence culture actually is, and what other contributing factors may be more important. We also hope to work on a major international cyberbullying cross-cultural study in the future, which will hopefully provide some answers to these questions.

Tags: cross-cultural, international, media, research.
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A Call for Consistency in Information Reported in Cyberbullying Research Articles

Article posted by Justin W. Patchin in January 11, 2011 at 4:18 pm.

(14 votes, average: 4.07 out of 5)

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Here at the Cyberbullying Research Center, in addition to our own projects, Sameer and I work hard to stay on top of all of the cyberbullying research being done by others. When new reports are released, or when articles are published in journals, we are probably among the first to read them. While there has been a dramatic increase in the number of articles published in journals over the last year or so, we find there is wide variation in the descriptive information reported in these articles about how the study was conducted and what results were obtained. In order to continue building a literature-base marked with quality and rigor, I would like to ask all researchers who are studying this problem to work toward reporting some common baseline information in all of their reports and published articles, so that the data can be accurately synthesized, compared, and contrasted. It is hard to learn from a literature-base that is so disparate on many factors. Let me provide just a few examples.

We have previously discussed the vast difference of cyberbullying prevalence rates reported across several published articles (rates range from 5.5% to 72% in the 42 articles I have read). We might better understand why there is such a difference if researchers better documented what they did and how they did it. For example, it makes sense that online-only, opt-in studies would yield higher prevalence rates as they are restricted to individuals who are regularly online and who volunteer to participate. Moreover, studies that include 18- and 19-year-old respondents in their assessment of “teen” cyberbullying will no doubt find higher lifetime prevalence rates than those that focus only on middle-school-aged youth (because, of course, they have been alive for a much longer period of time). And asking about cyberbullying experiences from the previous 30 days will certainly return fewer incidents than those who ask about lifetime experiences. Another major contributor to differences is the way cyberbullying is defined across studies. These are just a few examples of why there are many discrepancies among cyberbullying prevalence rates reported in the research.

If you are collecting data on cyberbullying, I would ask that you collect and report basic demographic characteristics of the sample and thoroughly describe how you carried out your study. We are more than happy to consult with other researchers about what would be best, so feel free to drop us a note. Here are a few elements that should be included in any published report on cyberbullying:

• What are the demographic characteristics of the sample (total number of students included, gender, race, age)?
• When were the data collected (month, year)?
• How did you define and operationalize cyberbullying (What is cyberbullying? How did you measure it? Can one instance of harassment online be considered cyberbullying based on your measure?)?
• What was the response window of experience with cyberbullying (previous 30 days, 6 months, year, lifetime)?
• How was the information collected (classroom survey, in-person interview, online survey, etc.)?
• How was the sample identified and selected (randomly, based on some unique characteristic, because they were in a particular class, etc.)?
• What is the sample representative of (a particular school or district, state, country) and how do you know that it actually is?
• Prevalence rates of experience with cyberbullying—both victimization and offending (total, and broken down by other demographic characteristics, especially gender).

Working together we can shed more meaningful light on the nature, extent, and consequences of cyberbullying and our efforts can be enhanced exponentially if we all use comparable methodologies. At the very least, we need to take care to document what we did, so that any differences that might be attributable to the way cyberbullying was studied can be identified and taken into consideration when discussing the results.

Tags: cyber-bullying, cyberbullying research, research.
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More Research on Electronic Dating Violence as Cyberbullying

Article posted by Sameer in November 2, 2010 at 8:31 am.

(9 votes, average: 4.44 out of 5)

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As we’ve pointed out in our blog discussing the fundamentals of electronic dating violence among adolescents, and in our 2010 teen dating violence statistics released last week, we seem to be dealing with a significant social problem here. I wanted to share with you about the other research that has been done on this topic in previous year – which should help illustrate the problem. First, an online survey of teens sponsored by the Liz Claiborne company revealed that 36% of teens say their boyfriend or girlfriend checked up on them as many as 30 times per day and 17% reported that their significant other made them afraid not to respond to cell phone calls, email, or text messages. Another recent poll spearheaded by MTV and the Associated Press found that 22% of youth between the ages of 14 and 24 who were involved in a romantic relationship said that their partner wrote something about them online or in a text message that wasn’t true. This same survey reported that 22% of youth felt that their significant other checked up on them too often online or via cell phone.

The results of these studies, and the numbers from our data collected in the Spring of this year, illustrate that electronic dating violence is occurring across a meaningful proportion of youth. A lot of additional research is necessary to better parse out what leads to this problem, and how teenagers typically deal with it. I personally wish I could somehow reach every teenager who is romantically linked, and powerfully convey what constitutes a healthy and well-balanced relationship, and what depicts a dysfunctional, abusive one. What youth silently and reluctantly accept now in their teenage relationships, they may very well believe is normative in their adult relationships. And that would be such a travesty.

Tags: cyber-bullying, dating violence, research, teens.
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Electronic Dating Violence and Teens – our 2010 research findings

Article posted by Sameer in October 26, 2010 at 10:54 am.

(9 votes, average: 4.78 out of 5)

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We have recently shared that electronic dating violence among teenagers is one of the facets of adolescent technology misuse we are exploring. Please see the previous referenced blog for foundational information. Today, I wanted to share with you our research results from our 2010 data. This is based on a random sample of approximately 4,400 11-18 year-old youth from a large school district in the southern United States. The demographic characteristics of the sample were statistically representative of the entire population of middle school and high school students in this district. If you would like further information about methodology, please let me know.

VICTIMIZATION

• 10% of youth said a romantic partner has prevented them from using a computer or cell phone.

• 6% of boys and girls say their romantic partner posted something publicly online to make fun of, threaten, or embarrass them.

• 10.4% of boys and 9.8% of girls said they received a threatening cell phone message from their romantic partner.

• 5.4% of boys and 3.4% of girls said their romantic partner uploaded or shared a humiliating of harassing picture of them online or through their cell phone

OFFENDING

• 7% of youth admitted that they prevented their romantic partner from using a computer or cell phone.

• 6% of boys and 4% of girls say they posted something publicly online to make fun of, threaten, or embarrass their romantic partner.

• About 7% of youth said they sent a threatening cell phone message to their romantic partner.

• 5% of boys and 3% of girls said they uploaded or shared a humiliating of harassing picture of their romantic partner online or through their cell phone

RELATIONSHIPS

• Victims of traditional (offline) dating violence are significantly more likely to be victims of electronic forms of dating violence (r=.75) than those who have not experienced offline bullying

• Those who admit to engaging in traditional dating violence also report engaging in electronic forms of dating violence (r=.77)

• Victims of dating violence (r=.51) and specifically electronic forms of dating violence (r=.64) are significantly more likely to also be victims of cyberbullying

• Youth who are cyberbullied are 3.6 times as likely to experience electronic teen dating violence

• Youth who admit to engaging in dating violence (r=.52) and specifically electronic forms of dating violence (r=.65) also admit to engaging in cyberbullying

• Youth who share their passwords with their significant other are nearly three times as likely to be victims of electronic dating violence

• Older students reported more experience with dating violence

We will share more about these findings and their implications in the immediate future.

Tags: abuse, dating violence, research, sexting, teens.
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Self-Esteem and Cyberbullying

Article posted by Sameer in September 24, 2010 at 10:35 am.

(19 votes, average: 4.47 out of 5)

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We just received the page proofs from the Journal of School Health (official journal of the American School Health Association) for a piece entitled “Cyberbullying and Self-Esteem” that they recently accepted for publication. There has been much discussion recently as to how cyberbullying is related to depressive symptoms among adolescents, and so we also wanted to share with you how it is related to lower self-esteem – which, by the way, tends to be correlated with depression.

Adolescence is a time when identity development is particularly important – and often is linked to the social environment. Teens therefore tend to seek behaviors and situations that help them value themselves positively and to avoid those who make them feel bad about who they are. This, then, is tied into perceptions and acceptance of his or her changing self, and plays a critical role in shaping how they grow up, and the type of person they become.

The literature regarding bullying and self-esteem consistently finds that victims of bullying tend to have lower self-esteem than non-victims. The precise reasons for this relationship are far less agreed upon and clear. It may be that the experience of being victimized decreases one’s self-esteem, or that those who have low self-esteem are more likely to be targeted as victims. Interestingly, the relationship between bullying offending and self-esteem is much less consistent. Studies have found evidence to suggest that bullies tend to have both higher and lower self-esteem than non-bullies, and some studies have found no relationship at all.

So, we wanted to see how cyberbullying is linked to self-esteem, and studied this using data in a random sample of 1,963 students from 30 middle schools (6th through 8th grades) in one of the largest school districts in the United States. Similar to the research on traditional bullying, we found that cyberbullying victims and offenders both have significantly lower self-esteem than those who have not been cyberbullying victims or offenders. This relationship held regardless of gender, race, and age, although our results suggest that males, non-Whites, and older middle schoolers tend to have lower levels of self-esteem than their peers. We also found that the relationship between cyberbullying victimization and self-esteem is definitely stronger than that of cyberbullying offending and self-esteem.

A good amount of research in the past has linked low self-esteem to poorer academic achievement, absenteeism, health problems, criminal behavior, and a number of other consequences. The fact that cyberbullying is related to low self-esteem should motivate us to do all we can to prevent it, and hopefully preempt these other negative outcomes.

If you’d like a copy of the full paper – which lists the sources for the research previously mentioned, please drop us a note and we can send it your way.

Tags: research, self-esteem.
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