Bullying at the Collegiate Level: A Case Study

Katlyn Hogue & Marissa DisbrowHanover College

2013

Does it Happen Here?

Previous Research• Gap between elementary/high school

and workplace. “Far less is known about student-to-student bullying at the undergraduate level in context of university” (Coleyshaw 2010).

• Where is the research on emerging adulthood/college bullying? It does not really exist.

Why College?There is an assumed increase in maturity at college but:• Students are still only in a transitional phase

between adolescence and adulthood.• Living situation is in a relatively isolated,

intense environment which might breed hostility.

• The tendency toward bullying might be universal, as with the case of bullying in the workplace (Namie & Namie 2009). 

Definitions of Bullying• No clear, universal definition of bullying;

past definitions are restrictive (Carrera, DePalma, and Lameiras 2011).

• Previous definitions (Olweus 1978 & Coleyshaw 2010).

• Repeated aggressive behavior, both physical and relational, that is targeted towards a specific individual or specific group of people by either one aggressor or a group of aggressors (with possible intentions of gaining or maintaining power).

Types of Bullying• Relational:

oVerbal: Name calling, insults, teasing, intimidation, verbal abuse;

oCovert: Spreading rumors, mimicking unkindly, negative facial or physical gestures.

• Physical: Kicking, pinching, hitting, pushing, tripping, or damaging property.

• Cyber-Bullying: Exclusion from social networking, defamatory personal website, heinous text messages.

Research Topic

• The nature of our research is exploratory. For this reason, we would like to examine whether or not bullying exists on Hanover’s campus, and if so, what types occur.

• From our observations, we expect there will be more reported relational bullying than physical and cyber-bullying.

Participants

Total Participants:

200

56 Male 142 Female2 Unknown

Age Range:18-22

Average Age: 20

90.5% Caucasian 2% African American

3.5% Hispanic 4% Other

Materials and Procedure

Participants completed a questionnaire about their bullying experiences on campus that contained three sections:• Situations in which they witnessed bullying• Situations in which they were the victim of

bullying• Situations in which they were the bully.

Witness & Victim Section

o There were statements describing the different types of bullying behavior and if they had ever occurred.

Example: “The person made posts on Facebook or Twitter that made the student(s) upset or uncomfortable.”

o There was an optional open-ended question about a specific incident.

Bully Section

o There was an optional open-ended question:

“Can you describe, in as much detail as you would like, an incident in which you bullied another student(s) at Hanover College?”

Frequency of Bullying Behavior

Mean St. Deviation Valid N

Witness Relational

1.219 0.504 194

VictimRelational

0.625 0.557 180

WitnessCyber

0.625 0.582 194

WitnessPhysical

0.365 0.571 193

VictimCyber

0.228 0.466 179

VictimPhysical

0.111 0.352 175

mean of Female

mean of Male

t df p-value

WitnessPhysical

0.2810 0.571 -2.757 74.34 0.00733

VictimPhysical

0.0565 0.245 -2.477 58.24 0.01617

Gender Differences

Greek vs. Unaffiliatedmean ofGreek

mean ofUnaffiliated

t df p-value

Witness Relational

1.369 1.1156 3.707 189.09 <0.001

Witness Physical

0.487 0.2826 2.369 139.09 0.0192

Witness Cyber

0.720 0.5601 1.903 169.56 0.0587

Qualitative Data

• Witnesso 60.23% = Relationalo 23.86% = Cybero 14.77% = Physicalo 1.14% = “Not

Witnessed”

• Bullyo 63.89% =

Relationalo 36.11% = Don’t

Bully

• Victimo 67.80% =

Relationalo 18.64% = Cybero 8.47% = Physicalo 3.39% = “Not

Bullied”o 1.69% = “Choose

not to say”

Case Study 1: Relational

The subtleties and Greek response of relational bullying.

“…being a member of a fraternity sometimes there’s a fine line between a joke and a disrespectful comment. I would say that that line has been crossed occasionally. Perhaps my brother's didn't realize or maybe they did. Usually it's verbal in nature and mostly attacks my character such as my values or personal life.”

Case Study 2: Cyber

The variety of bullies and dark side of the Internet.

“A Hanover staff member posted on Twitter about a girl that a male student was hooking up with. He called her disgusting/revolting fat and ugly and a waste of time. Other students saw this tweet and started showing other students and even printed it out (before it was deleted) and showed others. It got around to the girl it was about and it really upset her.”

Discussion• As we expected, there was more

relational bullying behaviors reported. o This was supported in both the closed-ended

and open-ended questions.

• This type of bullying is harder to condemn because it is not as easy to detect. o This is especially true for covert relational

bullying because it does not need to be as obvious as other types of bullying, such as physical.

Discussion• We expected that there would be

gender differences, but we did not expect it to be the stereotypical physical bullying behavior.

• Due to prior research, we know that the stereotypical bullying behavior occurs more among men than women, however, to us it is surprising that this difference still exists.

• Perhaps this means that bullying is an innate part of the human condition.

Discussion• We did have speculations about Greek

differences, but we were surprised at the significant differences.

• We do not know if the bullying behavior is happening in the Greek houses because we only know that people who identified as Greek reported such.

• This goes back to the close living environment.o They not only live closely, but also must spend,

presumably, more time together which may lead to even more hostility and bullying behaviors.

Limitations & Future• This is simply one college.• The nature of the research is

exploratory.

• This was a sobering study. We hope that people will recognize bullying as a serious issue on college campuses, and further pursue this as a research topic.

Conclusion• Bullying is more widespread and varied

on a college campus than recognized, but the phenomenon of harassment is already well established.

• Harassment may be a more familiar term used at the collegiate level.

• More attention should be paid to bullying.

Questions?Thank you.