Students’ suggestions for eliminating bullying at a university

Abstract

Students' suggestions for how to eliminate bullying at universities were gathered as part of an e-questionnaire sent to each university student (N = 10,551) at a Finnish university. The suggestions (n = 2804) regarding how to address bullying at universities were divided into the following four classes: support (944), punishment (78), support and punishment (65), and no suggestions (1717). Further analysis concerning support revealed the following five categories according to Houses ' (1981) classification: instrumental/material support (n = 265), informational support (n = 263), emotional support (n = 139), and appraisal support (n = 69). In addition, there were 208 inexact suggestions regarding how to stop bullying. Analysis concerning resources for help revealed the following five categories: Finnish Students Health Service/student association/police/university priest (120), university teachers (49), other students/peer support (41) and administration (36). In this classification, there were 698 inexact suggestions. This is a sign of the difficulty in addressing bullying situations.

Harassment and Bullying among Students in Higher Education Institutions: Manifestation of Single Cases of Harassment and Bullying in Aspects of Demographic Variables

“…Women also more often and more emotionally react to bullying, more often apply for help than men. In this regard, the results of the performed research correspond to those of Meriläinen, Puhakka and Sinkkonen (2015), who, by analysing students' suggestions for eliminating bullying pointed out that women are more supportive in striving to understand and help to those who experienced assaulting behaviour. Women, as the ones who more often take the role of defenders, are distinguished by others as well (Smith, 2016), and school researches (Hunter and Boyle, 2004) distinguish masculine gender namely as the one less applying to teachers concerning bullying and seeking for help both for themselves and others.…”

“…The research of Pontzer (2010) determined that it is men who could be distinguished as a gender that more often participates in traditional bullying and harassment both as bully, and victim of bullies. However, other researches do not determine relationship between students' gender and being a victim of traditional bullying (Wensley and Campbell, 2012), or determine significantly higher numbers of female students at higher education institutions who suffered bullying (Meriläinen, Puhakka and Sinkkonen, 2015). Although, in the latter case, a reliable difference in aspect of gender is not determined as well.…”

“…Bullying is a multifaceted phenomenon, spread in a society widely enough. At the same time, it is also a very personal experience of each person (Meriläinen, Puhakka and Sinkkonen, 2015). Such amplitude of the phenomenon also determines its conceptions' diversity that is related to both the research context and the use of the concepts in different cultures and languages.…”

“…The researches often analyse persons' experience in childhood or at other education institutions (Holt et al, 2014;Adams and Lawrence, 2011;Pontzer, 2010). The results of these researches are interpreted with reference to both various cultural or socio-economic factors, education policies or implemented intervention programmes, and various socio-demographic characteristics of the researched persons (Porhola et al, 2016;Meriläinen, Puhakka and Sinkkonen, 2015). Age, gender, ethnic origin, study course also might become significant factors in explanation of quantitative manifestations of bullying and harassment in the context of higher education (Goodboy, Martin and Goldman, 2016;Pontzer, 2010).…”

La enfermera escolar: comunicación eficaz para la prevención y detención del acoso escolar = The school nurse: effective communication for prevention and arrest of bullying

“…El Bullying trata de un problema muy serio que ha recibido mucha atención en los medios de comunicación y legislaturas estatales en todos los países aproximadamente en la última década (Evans & Smokowski, 2015). Los niños tienen derecho a un ambiente de aprendizaje seguro ya sea en la escuela como en actividades extraordinarias que, de lo contrario, no se podría alcanzar su pleno potencial académico, un óptimo crecimiento y desarrollo (Meriläinen, Puhakka & Sinkkonen, 2015).…”