Traditional Bullying, Cyber Bullying, and Deviance: A General Strain Theory Approach

Abstract

Agnew’s general strain theory (GST) has received significant empirical attention, but important issues remain unresolved. This study addresses three such issues. First, the authors examine the effects of bullying—a source of strain that may be consequential, but that has been neglected in GST research to date. Second, drawing from recent research on deliberate self-harm among adolescents, the authors examine the effects of bullying not just on externalizing deviance (aggressive acts committed against others and their property) but also on internalizing deviance directed against the self. Third, the authors examine these relationships separately for males and females to assess sex differences in responses to strain. These three issues are examined with self-report data collected from a sample of middle and high school students in a Southeastern state. The analysis reveals that bullying is consequential for both externalizing and internalizing forms of deviance and that these relationships are in some instances moderated by sex.

Self-Harm, Suicidal Behaviours, and Cyberbullying in Children and Young People: Systematic Review (Preprint)

“…Those articles which shared study populations were: Schenk et al [28] and Schenk et al [29]; Bauman et al [30] and Romero et al [31]; Alavi et al [32] and Roberts et al [33]; Cénat et al [34] and Hébert et al [35]; Hay and Meldrum [14] and Hay et al [36]; and Messias et al [37], Reed et al [38], and Kindrick et al [39]. Further details of these study populations are available in Supplementary Material 1.…”

“…Excluding duplicate populations [29,31,32,34,36,38,39], the total number of unique participants was 155,471, with a mean of 6,478 and median of 2,761 individuals per study. Most studies included both female and male participants (often not reported separately).…”

“…Cybervictimisation was analysed in 25 included articles [14,15,[26][27][28][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52], five examined both cybervictimisation and cyberbullying perpetration [11,30,31,40,53], and one investigated cyberbullying perpetration, but also included those who were both victims and perpetrators [29]. Inclusion in one of these groups was most commonly assessed by a participant's yes or no response to a single question.…”

“…Hay [36] c Cross-sectional Aim: To examine the effects of both cyber-and traditional bullying on the internalising behaviours of self-harm and suicide, as well as other various externalising behaviours. 2010b 15·0 Setting: School Data collection method: Self-report survey USA Medium n = 424 RR = 93% Negative Results: Cybervictimisation had an effects of β = 0·39 for self-harm, β = 0·41 for suicidal ideation, and β = 0·33 for the externalising behaviour of delinquency.…”

Problem behaviours, traditional bullying and cyberbullying among adolescents: longitudinal analyses

“…Cross-sectional research suggests that the perpetration of face-to-face bullying and cyberbullying are associated with problem behaviours such as poor academic achievement (Mitchell, Ybarra, & Finkelhor, 2007), drinking alcohol (Mitchell et al, 2007), smoking and other substance use problems (Niemelä et al, 2011), vandalism (Hay, Meldrum, & Mann, 2010), stealing (Hay et al, 2010), intentionally hurting other people (Hay et al, 2010), weapon-carrying (Dukes, Stein, & Zane, 2010) and other delinquent behaviours.…”