The Structural Equation Modeling Role of Irrational Beliefs in Predicting Students' Intermediate Cyber Bullying Experience: Difficulty in Emotion Regulation

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of irrational beliefs in predicting the experience of cyber bullying with mediation: difficulty in emotion regulation. The research method was descriptive correlational. The study population consisted of all male secondary school students in public schools of Ardabil province during the academic year of 2019-2020 (N = 21756). The list of all public boys' secondary schools in Ardabil province, which includes 179 schools, was prepared and two schools were selected from Ardabil, Parsabad, Garmi, Meshkinshahr and Khalkhal counties, and two classes were selected from each school. 409 of them were selected through cluster random sampling from the above statistical population and answered questionnaires of cyber-bullying experience, irrational beliefs and difficulty in emotion regulation. The data collected in this study were analyzed using Pearson correlation tests and Pattern of structural equations. Correlation coefficient results showed that experience of cyber bullying was positively and significantly correlated with irrational beliefs and difficulty in regulating students' emotion. Model fit indices of the model also confirmed the path of irrational beliefs in bullying directly and also with difficult mediation in emotion regulation. The results of this study show that irrational beliefs mediated by difficulty in emotion regulation have the ability to predict students' experience of cyber bullying significantly.