The damage that can be caused by bullying is quite serious among adolescents, to whom sound peer relation formation is important. Bullying tends to occur at the group dynamics level, and bystanders account for the majority in bullying situations. For ...
The damage that can be caused by bullying is quite serious among adolescents, to whom sound peer relation formation is important. Bullying tends to occur at the group dynamics level, and bystanders account for the majority in bullying situations. For this reason, it is very important to investigate determining factors that affect bystanders’ role types. The purpose of this study was to examine the individual and environmental factors that have effects on bystanders’ role types. Bystander subtypes were classified as bully-follower, outsider, victim-defender, and no role. The factors that have effect on bystanders' subtypes were sympathy, class cohesiveness, homeroom teacher's attitude toward bullying, and student perceptions of school atmosphere.
This research chose 454 bystanders, in 16 classes in the second year of 5 girls’ middle schools located in B City, and analyzed 350 bystanders performing specific roles in bullying situations based on self-report type measures. The Z-score of each role was employed to sort bystanders in bullying situations. One-way ANOVA was performed to find the different individual and environmental factors according to the role types. Hierarchical regression analysis was carried out to examine the discriminative influence of individual and environmental factors on bystander subtypes.
The results of the analysis were as follows. First, the empathic ability of victim-defenders was significantly higher than that of the bully-follower and the outsider group. Also, there was no meaningful difference between the latter groups in terms of the empathic ability. Second, there was no meaningful difference among victim-defenders, bully-followers and outsiders in terms of class cohesiveness. Third, victim-defenders showed more a positive perception regarding their homeroom teacher's attitude toward bullying than that of bully-follower group. Also, there not only was no meaningful difference between victim-defender group and outsider group, but also was no meaningful difference between outsider group and bully-follower group. Fourth, in terms of student perception of school atmosphere, victim-defenders had the most positive perception, followed by outsiders, and finally bully-followers. Fifth, the independent variables that were influential to victim-defenders were sympathy and homeroom teacher's attitude toward bullying. On the other hand, the independent variables that were influential to the outsiders were sympathy and student perception of school atmosphere. The only independent variable that was influential to the bully-followers was student perception regarding school atmosphere. The value of this study lies in establishing individual and environmental factors that have effects on segmentalized bystanders’ role types. It is expected that established individual and environmental factors can reduce bullying by inducing bystanders to change their roles.