Testing Assumptions About Cyberbullying: Perceived Distress Associated With Acts of Conventional and Cyberbullying Grade:

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Cyber bullying

Bauman & Newman (2012), in light of the considerable attention that cyber bullying has received in the recent past and the assumptions the phenomenon had received, undertook to test assumptions about cyber bullying. Cyber bullying in essence has much to do with using the knowledge of information and communication technology to harm other people's social status, relationships, and reputation. Conspiracy that clouds cyber bullying continues considerable attention from popular media. Protracted legal tussles have been witnessed in instances when reports of isolated cases have been made. Bauman & Newman (2012), sought to establish whether experts speculation that the potential from cyber bullying was in deed greater than the dangers posed by conventional bullying. The fact that this assumption had not been empirically informed their resolve to conduct this study.

Five hundred and eighty eight students from Southern University participated in this study. Seventy six percent of the participants were female gender. The participants' ages ranged from 17 to 25. Their mean age was 19.8. About 45% of the participants came from the university vicinity. Ten per cent of them came from elsewhere while 35% were natives of other U.S. states. Nine percent of the participants had other national origins. Sixty-six percent of the participants...

Five percent of the participants indicated they belonged to "other" ethnicity. Participants were predominantly from psychology classes. They were recruited via online subject pool system.
The system was settled on because it provided several options for fulfilling students' course research requisites. The word bullying was never mentioned until the debriefing as the survey was advertised as a study of social attitudes. The online survey lasted for at least 15 minutes. Participants' informed consent was sought before the survey commenced. Procedures and measures were approved by the Institutional Review Board at the researcher's university. Questionnaires used in the survey were developed by the authors of the study. Items in the questionnaire captured a broad range of behaviors that represented familiar forms of bullying in 17- to 25-year-olds that could be delivered through conventionally or through the cyber. Final scale had eight pairs of items that described an incident in which a participant was bullied. The eight items also addressed incidences of conventional bullying.

The items also addressed parallel scenarios in which the same bullying behavior was perpetuated through communication technology. Response options ranged from 1 to 7. To assess historical victimization, participants were asked whether they were bullied during junior high, high school, and college by choosing from never,…