Measuring cyberbullying: Implications for research
Section snippets
Defining cyberbullying: implications for research
It has taken several generations, and numerous tragic accounts of teens suffering from emotional, psychological, behavioral, and physical consequences, but it is safe to say that society has come around to the realization that bullying is a problem that warrants our time, attention, and response (Smith & Brain, 2000). It is now relatively rare to hear a person proclaim that bullying is a “rite of passage,” resiliency training for the “hard knocks of life,” or an otherwise acceptable aspect of
The core elements of bullying and cyberbullying
In January of 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Education, and the Health Resources and Services Administration worked with a number of experts across various fields to develop a uniform definition of bullying:
Bullying is any unwanted aggressive behavior(s) by another youth or group of youths who are not siblings or current dating partners that involves an observed or perceived power imbalance and is repeated multiple times or is highly likely to be
Considerations for research
While there is fairly widespread agreement on the importance of the aforementioned four elements (repetition, intent, harm, and power differential), the research community has struggled to incorporate these elements into a valid and reliable measure (Greif and Furlong, 2006, Greif et al., 2003). Just as troubling, when students themselves are asked to define bullying, they rarely include mention of these four components (Cuadrado-Gordillo, 2011, Vaillancourt et al., 2008). It therefore
Operationalizing cyberbullying
We have not yet developed a measure for cyberbullying that completely and clearly accounts for all of the elements discussed above (and are unaware of anyone who has). We have, however, constructed and refined a scale that we feel most closely approximates the behaviors experienced by youth. Variants of this scale have been administered to over 15,000 middle and high school students in over 100 schools across the United States over the last decade (Hinduja & Patchin, 2015a). Some of the schools
Conclusion
Many young people say or do mean things to others, but the vast majority of them do not engage in what is accurately defined as bullying or cyberbullying. Calling all harmful behaviors between peers “bullying” discounts the nuanced experiences of those involved. As Bazelon (2013) has argued, the tendency to paint with this broad-brush stroke leads to confusion and misinformation about various types of harm—and how best to address them. Under most definitions, bullying is much worse than simply
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