Victims, Perpetrators, and Bystanders: A Study of Youth's Attitudes Toward Cyberbullying

• In Event: Youth Mental Health: Mindfulness, Cyberbullying, and Peer Relationships

Abstract

This paper studies the following two questions: (1) How can attitudes towards cyberbullying be empirically measured and (2) what attitudes do Swiss students have towards cyberbullying? In our effort to clarify the questions, we developed an instrument for measuring students’ attitudes towards cyberbullying. The primary objective of this paper is to validate the measurement scale. In a second step, we present the characteristics of attitudes among students in Switzerland. Overall, the children interviewed, especially girls, expressed negative opinions of cyberbullying. However, previous perpetrators of cyberbullying do not rate the behavior as negatively. Even though a clear majority of the schoolchildren are opposed to cyberbullying, just under a quarter of them (tend not to) rate such behavior as reprehensible.

Authors

• Arvid Nagel, PH-Institute NMS Berne

• Horst Biedermann, St. Gallen University of Teacher Education