Epidemiology and study of individual risk and protective factors of cyberbullying

Several studies have been conducted abroad about cyberbullying that have reported statistics on the prevalence and the factors affecting it; Despite this diverse research, cyberbullying in our country is still an unknown phenomenon and despite the expansion of the use of technologies, research has not yet been conducted. Therefore, the epidemiology of this new type of bullying and the study of risk and protective factors related to it, can provide grounds for conducting research within the country. In the present article, attempts to investigate the prevalence and individual risk and protective factors of cyberbullying.

In the present descriptive-correlation study, among the girl and boy students of second grade of high school in Ahvaz in the academic year 2018-19, two samples, 2000 in the prevalence stage and 400 in the hypothesis testing stage using multi-stage random sampling method (stratified) were chosen. The European cyberbullying intervention project questionnaire (ECIPQ) and the researcher-made demographic characteristics questionnaire were used to collect data. Descriptive statistical methods and logistic regression were used to analyze the data.

Findings of this study showed that 15.4% of adolescents were cyber-bully, 14.7% cyber-victim and 6.7% cyber bully-victim. The prevalence of cyber-bully and cyber bully-victim was higher in adolescent boys than in girls; while the prevalence of cyber-victim was higher among adolescent girls than boys. In addition, the results showed that the dimensions of cyberbullying (cyber-victim, cyber-bully and cyber bully-victim) could be predicted based on individual characteristics (technology use rate, gender, ethnicity, body mass index) (p