Type and frequency of bullying and self-esteem in the elementary school

النوع : Mémoire

Peer victimization is rapidly becoming recognized by educational and development al psychologists as a social experience that increases children's risk for a var iety of psychological adjustment problems (Boulton and Underwood, 1992). The pre sent study was conducted to investigate the extent of bullying, in its varying t ypes and frequencies, and its effects on children's self-esteem in the Lebanese context. The sample included 167 participants from grades 3, 4, and 5 coming fro m three upper-middle socioeconomic schools in greater Beirut that teach English as a second language. The Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (1996) and the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inv entory (SEI) (Coopersmith, 1967) were administered to the entire sample. The Olw eus bully/victim Questionnaire was administered to identify the victims of bully ing while the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory determined the self-esteem of th e participants. The obtained data was analyzed using the SPSS for Windows comput er program. Students were identified as victims of relational, overt, and frequent victimization based on criteria provided by Olweus. ANOVA results were used to compare the mean gender differences in subjects exposed to overt and relational victimization, the self- esteem of bullied and non-bullied students and the self-esteem of the victims su bjected to frequent versus less frequent bullying. Furthermore, the difference i n the self-esteem of victims subjected to overt and relational bullying were compared through a t-test. Results revealed that there were no significant gender differences on relational and overt victimization, si gnificant difference on self-esteem between bullied and non-bullied students between victims subjected to frequent versus less frequent victimization T-test results comparing the self-esteem of victims subjected to overt and relational b ullying revealed that there is no statistically significant difference in self-e steem between victims subjected to overt and relational victimization. Results were discussed and impl ications for both theory and practice were presented.