Cyberbullying among Turkish high school students

• Published in: Scandinavian journal of psychology Vol. 62; no. 4; pp. 608 - 616
• Main Authors: Cagirkan, Baris, Bilek, Gunal
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.08.2021
• Subjects: Cellular telephones; Confirmatory factor analysis; Cyberbullying; exploratory factor analysis; Factor analysis; high school students; Internet; Internet access; Population studies; rural area; Secondary school students; Confirmatory factor analysis; exploratory factor analysis; cyberbullying; rural area; high school students
• ISSN: 0036-5564; 1467-9450
• DOI: 10.1111/sjop.12720

Cyberbullying, a new form of the traditional bullying that has been transferred to the electronic environments (social media, online gaming environments, blogs, etc.), from the physical context to the virtual context, refers mainly to aggression that is deliberately carried out by adolescents. This study aims to measure the level of cyberbullying in Turkish high school students living in Eastern Turkey and identify the demographic and socio‐economic factors which lead to being bully and being cyberbullied. The study population consists of 470 students aged from 15–19 years. exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were implemented to identify the factor structure of the scale and it was observed that the Turkish version of the cyberbullying scale (CBS) is best represented by a one‐factor structure. The comparisons across demographic and socio‐economic variables were implemented using independent samples t test, one‐way ANOVA, and Tukey HSD. To summarize the key findings, the variables that significantly affect the students’ CBS scores are; gender, school type, number of siblings, ownership of a mobile phone, length of ownership of a mobile phone, private access to the Internet, family supervision, purpose of Internet usage, length of time spent on the Internet and type of application used to message with others.