Middle School Students’ Willingness To Intervene In School Bullying

Author(s):

Ying-Yao Cheng(presenting / submitting)Ying-Tze Chen Li-Ming Chen

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

05. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education

Format:

Poster

Session Information

05 SES 04.5 PS, General Poster Session

General Poster Session

Time:

2016-08-24

12:00-13:30

Room:

NM-Concourse Area

Chair:

Contribution

Objective

School bullying has many negative effects on students, such as high risk of suicide,
low grades in the school, and high drop-out rate (Cornell, Gregory, Huang, & Fan, 2013;
Mueller, James, Abrutyn, & Levin, 2015; Strom, Thoresen, Wentzel-Larsen, & Dyb,
2013). As school bullying is characterized by repetition, power imbalance, and
intentionality (Olweus, 1993), these offensive behaviors happen constantly among
students. Consequently, how to reduce school bullying and make the campus a better
and friendlier learning environment becomes an important issue.

Encouraging bystanders to intervene in school bullying is essential. Studies
revealed that school bullying is a part of the process of group interaction, and nearly
90% of bullying happened while peers were present (Hawkins, Pepler & Craig, 2001).
Advocating student and peer intervention or counselling students on the issue of school
bullying could bring positive impacts to schools (Salmivalli, 2014). Taking advantage
of the power of bystanders and encouraging them intervene in school bullying is one of
the strategies to improve school bullying.

However, one of the main difficulties in preventing school bullying at present is
that students have low intention to intervene. Research revealed that only about 20% of
students intervened in school bullying, while others watched passively, or clamored
when it happened (Hawkins et al., 2001; O’ Connell, Pepler & Craig, 1999). Peer
nomination studies also found that there are six categories of participant roles, including
bullies, victims, assistant, reinforcer, defender, and outsider (Salmivalli, Lagerspetz,
Björkqvist, Ö sterman, & Kaukiainen, 1996). As a result, it is necessary to further
comprehend what factors may affect students’ intervention to encourage students to
intervene at an appropriate time.

Studies have shown that students of different genders revealed differences in both
participant roles and willingness to intervene. Most of the females have taken the roles
of defenders and outsiders, while males were bullies, assistants and reinforcers
(Goossens, Olthof, & Dekker, 2006; Salmivalli et al., 1996). Moreover, females had
more willingness to intervene in bullying than males (Espelage, Green, & Polanin, 2012;
Rigby & Johnson, 2006). Consequently, the first purpose of this study was to examine
if there was interaction between genders and students’ willingness to intervene in
different types of bullying.

Research has indicated that the students had higher tendency to intervene in verbal
bullying than in physical bullying (Rigby & Johnson, 2006); teachers and pre-service
teachers showed higher willingness to intervene in physical bullying than in relational
bullying (Boulton, Hardcastle, Down, Fowles, & Simmonds, 2014; Craig, Henderson, & Murphy, 2000). Thus, the second purpose of this study was to examine whether there
were interaction between participant roles and different kinds of bullying.
In brief, the four research questions were shown as follow:

1. Do students of different genders show different willingness to intervene in school
bully?
2. Is there interaction between genders and the willingness to intervene in different
bullying categories?
3. Do students characterized by different bullying roles (e.g. defenders, outsiders) show
different willingness to intervene in school bullying?
4. Is there interaction between participant roles and the willingness to intervene in
different bullying categories?

Method

Methods Participants A total of 950 students from grade 7 to grade 9 (average age=14.1) participated in the study. The sample included 48.2% males and 51.8% females; 259 students (27.3%) were in grade 7, 284 students (29.9%) were in grade 6, and 406 students (42.8%) were in grade 9. Instruments Willingness to intervene in bullying scale, WIBS The WIBS, a self-reported scale, was used to examine the willingness of middle school students to intervene in different bullying categories. As bullying behaviors might be different in groups of homogeneous and heterogeneous genders (Veenstra, Lindenberg, Munniksma, & Dijkstra, 2010), the WIBS was divided into two versions: boy version and girl version. Besides, WIBS included three bullying categories: physical, verbal, and relational bullying. Each category consisted four items, with 12 items in total. Students were asked to rate their answer on a four-point Likert scale, with scores ranging from 1 to 4, which ranged from “extremely disagree” to “extremely agree.” Self-reported behaviors in bullying scale The self-reported behaviors in bullying scale is a self-reported scale which allows participants to evaluate their own roles in bullying, and was widely used by researchers (Pozzoli & Gini, 2010, 2013; Pozzoli, Gini, & Vieno, 2010). Studies indicated that the scale was analyzed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and resulted in three factors: bullies, defenders, and outsiders. The data had good fit to the model and good construct validity (Pozzoli & Gini; 2010). Three defender items were used in this study, as well as three outsider behavior items, – on a four-point Likert scale, which ranged from 1 (rarely) to 4 (always). Data Analysis 1. Two-way mixed model ANOVA was conducted to examine if participants of different genders would show different willingness to intervene in distinct bullying categories, to answer research question 2. t test was used to analyze whether participants with high scores either on the defender or outsider item would show differences on the WIBS, in order to answer the research question 3. Two-way mixed model ANOVA analysis was used to examine the differences between the different participant roles and the willingness to intervene in bullying, to answer the research question 4. Data sources Four middle schools were randomly selected from northern, central, southern and eastern Taiwan. Students were informed that the questionnaires were anonymous, and their answers would not affect school reputation or their personal rights.

Expected Outcomes

The t test analysis revealed that the willingness of different genders to intervene in bullying showed significant differences (t = -4.47, p < .001). The willingness of female students (M = 2.95) to intervene in bullying was significantly higher than that of male students (M = 2.77). The mixed-model two-way ANOVA analysis found a relationship between gender and willingness to intervene in different bullying categories (F= 5.28, p < .01, η2 = .01), indicating that there is a difference in the willingness of female and male students to intervene in various bullying categories. Post hoc tests with Bonferroni adjustments revealed the following findings: First, female students are more willing to intervene in physical bullying than in relational and verbal bullying, whereas male students are more willing to intervene in physical bullying than in verbal and relational bullying. Second, females are more willing than males to intervene in all three types of bullying. These results should be interpreted with caution because the effect size value was low. The t test analysis of different roles’ willingness to intervene in bullying showed significant differences (t =10.5, p < .001); those who had higher scores on the defender subscale (M = 3.10) showed more willingness to intervene in bullying than those with higher scores on the outsider subscale (M = 2.51). The mixed model two-way ANOVA analysis revealed no relationship between different roles and the willingness to intervene in different bullying categories (F = 2.35, p > .05, see Table 2). However, there was a significant main effect in the willingness to intervene in different bullying categories (F = 49.0, p < .001, η2 = .09), which demonstrated that students had different levels of willingness to intervene depending on the type of bullying.

References

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Author Information

Ying-Yao Cheng (presenting / submitting)

National Sun Yat-Sen University

Institute of Education

Kaohsiung

Ying-Tze Chen

National Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan, Republic of China

Li-Ming Chen