Brief report: Cyberbullying perpetration and its associations with socio-demographics, aggressive behaviour at school, and mental health outcomes.
Fletcher, Adam;
Fitzgerald-Yau, Natasha;
Jones, Rebecca;
Allen, Elizabeth;
Viner, Russell M;
Bonell, Chris;
(2014)
Brief report: Cyberbullying perpetration and its associations with socio-demographics, aggressive behaviour at school, and mental health outcomes.
Journal of adolescence, 37 (8).
pp. 1393-1398.
ISSN 0140-1971
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.10.005
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Relatively little is known about those who cyberbully others, especially in a UK context. We drew on data from 1144 young people aged 12-13 in eight English secondary schools to examine the prevalence of cyberbullying perpetration and its associations with sociodemographics, other behaviours, and health outcomes. Overall, 14.1% of respondents reported ever cyberbullying others with no significant differences by gender or socioeconomic status. Drawing on mixed-effects logistic regression models, first we found a strong, dose-response relationship between aggressive behaviour at school and cyberbullying others, suggesting that cyberbullying may not only be a facet of wider patterns of bullying but also of aggression more broadly. Second, cyberbullying others was associated with poorer quality of life and with psychological difficulties but not with peer/social problems or worse mental wellbeing. Longitudinal studies are needed to assess whether such associations are causal.