Cyberbullying: A new dimension to an old problem

Abstract

Shariff and Gouin (2005) describe cyberbullying as psychological bullying, enacted using electronic communication tools such as; mobile phones, blogs, websites, and chat rooms. The aim of this research was to examine the prevalence, the methods and the impact of cyberbullying among Irish secondary school students. Another objective of the study was to investigate personality traits and self-concept patterns of the different participants involved in the research. The final analysis included 876 participants aged 12 to 16 (x =14.22, SD=l.224), of whom 61% were male and 39% were female. A questionnaire design was selected for the current study. Participants completed the Cyberbullying Questionnaire (Corcoran, Connolly & O' Moore, 2008) which investigated experience of traditional bullying and cyberbullying, the Jr. Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975) which examined personality, and the Piers-Harris 2 (Piers & Herzberg, 2002) which examined self-concept Analysis revealed that 23 (2.6%) participants admitted to cyberbullying others on at least one occasion, and 55 (6.3%) participants had been cyber victimized at least once. The rates of cyberbullying found in the current research are low compared to other studies, particularly research from the UK (e.g. Smith, Mahdavi, Carvalho & Tippet, 2006). This begins the investigation of cyberbullying in Ireland. A great deal more investigation is needed to tackle the problem.