Differences in Parent and Child Reporting of Bullying Experiences for Adolescents with Disabilities

• In Event: Bullying and Exclusion of Differently Abled Youth: Perspectives, Outcomes and Approaches to Foster Inclusion

Abstract

Bullying is an issue for many children and adolescents. This is especially true for adolescents with disabilities. These adolescents report higher levels of bullying victimization (Rose et al., 2011), and those with intellectual disability (ID) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are at the greatest risk (Sterzing et al., 2012). However, most of this information comes from either self-report or parent-report, both of which have been found to be potentially inaccurate forms of reporting bullying victimization (Jia et al., 2018). Adolescents with disabilities may not report victimization clearly due to lack of understanding what constitutes bullying, and parents may not be fully aware of their child’s experiences at school. One way to combat this issue is to examine adolescents’ actual, lived experiences with bullying victimization, and compare that to parent descriptions to gain a more comprehensive picture of the issue. This study compared descriptions of bullying victimization from adolescent and parent interviews in order to better understand bullying experiences. Descriptions of experiences were explored to provide more comprehensive and accurate insight into potential ways to more effectively address this problem.
For this study we conducted interviews with adolescents diagnosed with ID and/or ASD and their parents. Eighteen adolescents (4 female, 14 male) aged 10-15 years of age were interviewed. For twelve of the children one of their parents was also interviewed. All parents were female and aged 30-57 years of age. Structured interviews were conducted using an interview guide. Interviews for the parent and child were conducted separately. Each were asked questions regarding the child’s ability to understand bullying as a concept, types of bullying the child may have experienced, and how those experiences may have impacted the child. Parent and child interviews were analyzed separately with a content analysis conducted on all transcribed interviews. As the interviews were more structured in nature to allow for clearer parent/child comparisons, answers to the interview questions were grouped and summarized and then analyzed for themes. Once themes were determined, the results for the parents and adolescents were then merged to examine the data dyadically and gain a more applicable understanding of bullying experiences.
From these analyses four main themes emerged. The first theme was that of the child as an unreliable narrator, often having trouble understanding and describing bullying experiences. The second theme was differences in how the adolescents and their parents view relational bullying, with parents being overall more aware of relational bullying and its impact. The third theme was parents viewing the impact of disability on the bullying, with the adolescents rarely mentioning disability. The fourth and final theme was the dichotomy of how school involvement was viewed, with parents and adolescents being both pleased and displeased with how the school was handling bullying issues. These results have significant implications for how we understand bullying experiences among adolescents with disabilities. We need to take into consideration the differences between self-report and parent-report and develop tools to be able to understand and combat the problem more effectively.

Authors

• Rebecca Kammes, Michigan State University
  Presenting Author

• Marisa H. Fisher, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Cynde Josol, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Katie Cwiakala, Michigan State University
  Non-Presenting Author