As school violence and peer harassment became serious problems in Korean society, more attention has been paid to identify the reasons and countermeasures. Peer harassment should be resolved in the relationship with whole students not between an assau...
As school violence and peer harassment became serious problems in Korean society, more attention has been paid to identify the reasons and countermeasures. Peer harassment should be resolved in the relationship with whole students not between an assaulter and victim. First of all, early intervention is needed for prevention of incidents.
In this study, peer harassment in after school care classes in Daejeon area was investigated to identify the influence of environmental characteristics such as peer, family and teachers as well as the demographic and psychological characteristics of the children.
The issues studied are as follows:
1. What difference is there in peer harassment level in after school care according to gender and grade of the students ?
2. What are the psychological characteristics of the victims?
3. What kind of social relationship the victims experience?
To verify the hypotheses according to the research issues, all the children participated in After School Care Center in Daejeon were examined.
The dependent variable was harassment experience and independent variables influencing it were demographic factors (gender and grade), psychological characteristics such as number of close peer friends, popularity among peers, attention of teachers and nurturing attitudes of parents. For analysis, SPSS 10.0 statistical package was used.
Followings are the summary of the research results.
First, even may of elementary school students experienced peer harassment 32.7% of boys and 41.2% of girls reported that they had an experience of harassment. It implies that children experienced and learned various kinds of harassment in their childhood. The most frequent type of harassment is calling by name or pulling a leg severely. Besides, they experienced other kinds of harassment, as well.
Second, by gender, girls experienced a bit more than boys. But there was not a statistically significant difference by gender. There was statistically significant difference by grade. In other words, younger students experienced harassment more frequently. It implied there was a hierarchy in after school care center, as may different grades were studying together.
Third, looking into psychological characteristics of victims, those who have low self-respect and social skills were tend to experience the harassment.
Fourth, characteristics of social relationship of victims were investigated. Those who have less close peer friends were tend to experience harassment. There were more victims when the teachers of after school care center did not pay attention to peer harassment. However the popularity did not influence harassment experience. It implies that there may be difference between the actual popularity and the perceived popularity. Children from the family where the parents had negative nurturing attitude had more vulnerable to harassment.
In the regression analysis results influencing harassment experience, those psychological characteristics of victims did not make any statistically significant impacts. Therefore, we should be careful not to blame victims because of those characteristics but we should consider social relationship characteristics all together.
In a summary, demographic, psychological and social relationship factors made some impacts on peer harassment of elementary school students. To prevent peer harassment, individual intervention should be avoided. To deal with this issue effectively and eradicate the problems, and early post-intervention and prevention programs should be performed. For this, social workers should make diversified intervention efforts.