The TABBY method: Results from a school based intervention against cyberbullying in Greece

Transcription

1 The TABBY method: Results from a school based intervention against cyberbullying in Greece Ch. Athanasiades*, H. Kamariotis* & A. Psalti** *School of Psychology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece **Alexander Technological Institute of Thessaloniki

2 Threat Assessment of Bullying Behavior

3 Aims of the Project To conduct action research with a sample of secondary school students who use the internet, to identify their perception of risk as well as types of cyberbullying they might suffer or perform. To implement and assess an a intervention against cyberbullying, which is based on educating students in schools by providing them with age-appropriate appropriate guidelines, an interactive self-assessment tool of risky internet behavior (the TABBY checklist), and videos with relative themes of cyber-victimization.

4 Research sample 314 secondary school students (50.3% boys and 49.7% girls) participated in the Greek study. Most of the students were born in Greece and attended the second grade of Middle School (between 13 and 14 years of age). All schools were located in the Greater Metropolitan Area of Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece. 87.9% of the students had at least one profile in a social network, mainly Facebook. 90.5% claimed that they use the internet up to 4 hours per day. The average number of friends on social networks was % % of the students reported having an above average to excellent school performance.

5 Research plan The students were divided in two groups: an Experimental (49.7%) and a Control group (50.3%). The TABBY self assessment checklist on cyber - bullying and -victimization was administered electronically to both groups in schools in April 2012 (pre-test).

6 Preliminary results - traditional bullying Most of the participants (78.3% and 82.5%) reported that they had never experienced (as victims) or inflicted (as bullies) any type of bullying behavior at school during the past six months. Jokes (13.4% for victims and 13.1% for bullies), offensive teasing (7% for victims and 4.1% for bullies), threats (4.8% for victims and 2.2% for bullies), and exclusion (3.5% for victims and 1.3% for bullies) were the types of bullying most often reported by the students. 57% of the students reported that they talk with their teachers about safe use of the Internet, while 65.3% of the students claimed that they do the same with their parents.

7 Preliminary results - cyberbullying Almost one-fifth of the students reported that they were the victims of cyberbullying once or twice during the past six months, mainly of denigration (19.7%) or impersonation (19.4%). Almost one in four students (25.5%) reported having sent nasty or mean messages to someone once or twice during the past six months. Approximately 14% of the participants claimed that they had used some other types of cyberbullying (i.e. outing and denigration) once or twice during the past six months.

8 Correlations There were significant correlations between (a) cyberbullying and bullying at school (r=.320, p=.000) and between cybervictimization and victimization at school (r=.207, p=.000); (b) cybervictimization in the past and the estimate for victimization both in traditional (r=.254, p=.000) and cyberbullying (r=.334, p=.000) incidents in the future; (c) cyberbullying others in the past and the estimate for their bullying others in traditional (r=.317, p=.000) and cyberbullying (r=.519, p=.000) incidents in the future.

9 Gender differences (a) more girls (88.4%) than boys (74.4%) reported that they never bullied someone at school; (b) more boys than girls reported using jokes (18.2% versus 9.2% respectively) and offensive teasing (8.5% versus 2.3% respectively) to bully others at school; (c) more boys than girls stated that they have been the victims of impersonation on the internet (x² (3) = 9.61, p=.022); (d) more boys than girls stated that they have visited websites of illegal content (x² (4) = 80.43, p=.000).

10 The students Tabby profiles 15,6%** 23,9% Green Yellow Orange Red 60,5% More boys than girls had an orange profile (x² (2) = 9.69, p=.008). None of the students had a RED profile.

11 Intervention (the Tabby method) The students of the Experimental group participated in an intervention based on the TABBY method, which was implemented by their teachers in schools. The intervention included the completion of the TABBY questionnaire by students in class and the presentation of the TABBY videos, followed by a discussion on the negative consequences of cyberbullying as well as on proper internet use and certain actions against cyber-victimization. The teachers who implemented the intervention had been trained by the Greek research team in a special seminar of nine hours.

12 Results following the intervention October 2012 (post-test) test) Experimental Group (n=123) Control Group (n=140) Before the intervention After the intervention Before the intervention After the intervention Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Estimate for cyber- victimization in the next 6 months 0.76* * Scale from 0 to 4 Involvement in cyber- victimization during the last 6 months 1.27** ** Scale from 0 to 4

13 Inconclusive results Although, there was some slight improvement in the Experimental group's behavior toward safer internet choices, there is room for improvement. Some of the reasons for this lack of conclusive results may be: (a) the long time that elapsed between the two measurements (six months), including two months of summer vacation, which might have weakened the effect of the TABBY training, and (b) the lack of commitment shown by the teachers who took up the training.

14 Concluding remarks Through the implementation of the TABBY in Internet Project, we achieved to: (a) raise awareness and sensitize a significant part of the Greek public about the phenomenon of cyberbullying; (b) study the manifestation of the phenomenon in Greece; (c) develop a solid instrument, the TABBY checklist, which allows students to assess the risk of cyberbullying faced or performed by them; and (d) provide the school community with a comprehensive toolkit (TABBY in Internet), which can assist schools in their battle against violence in the Internet.

15 Concluding remarks In the future, the Greek team plans to continue to raise public awareness about the phenomenon, to expand the Project to a larger number of schools, and to collaborate further with school officials and the Greek Ministry of Education so that the TABBY method can become available to all Greek schools as well as the basis for a country-wide policy regarding cyberbullying prevention and intervention.