There are more news in recent years mentioning and discussing school bullying, and to some extent its relationship to cyberbullying. Bullying affects the whole community and has a great impact on pupils and adults (Hamarus & Kaikkonen, 2007). The increased reporting and seriousness of bullying may increase public awareness and concerns about cyberbullying, it brings to question how cyberbullying is different from traditional bullying and whether bullying is a threat to society or a moral panic generated by the media. As a result, this research aims to analyze the difference between traditional bullying and cyberbullying and discover whether there are any correlation factors related to bullying. This research is based on qualitative design with two focus groups and three individual interviews. There were 11 secondary school teachers aged between 23 to 53, who participated in this study. Results suggested the difference between cyberbullying and traditional bullying focuses mainly on the high accessibility, anonymity and more bystanders found on the web. Nonetheless, there are some similarities among traditional bullying and cyberbullying that both have ambiguous definitions and it is hard to define whether bullies are intentionally harm others. Furthermore, it is suggested there are transformations between traditional bullying and cyberbullying, which increases the seriousness of bullying harms. As a result, it seems there is an eagerness in tackling bullying, although one may question whether bullying is a moral panic. Nonetheless, as suggested in this study, there was no moral panic on bullying in Hong Kong as perceived by teachers, teachers on the other hand, did not perceive bullying as a threat as well. However there are some limitations which may vary the research result. Lastly, the results suggested there is more than one way to tackle bullying and not a single efficient tackling strategy. Since this study mainly recruited secondary school teachers, their perception on bullying may be different from the general public since they have more contact with bullying cases. Thus future study is needed with more randomization. Since bullies’ and victims’ voices will also be important in analyzing bullying, it is suggested that future studies can also recruit bullies and victims in sharing their personal experiences. / published_or_final_version / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Phase two was a large scale survey, whereby a convenient sample of 1319 junior secondary school students were recruited from five schools in the main study. A total number of 1211 students aged 11 years and older completed the questionnaires. The results of the main study showed that the three occurrences of bullying stressors which occurred most frequently were "Bullies make fun of my physical appearance unpleasantly", "Bullies insult me in front of other people" and "Bullies intentionally trick me". Findings also indicated that adolescents often appraised bullying as being "Physical harm or emotional hurt" and "Threaten of getting harm or loss". In particular, the highest levels of stress experienced by adolescents were in incidents where "Bullies gain peer support that I deserved to be bullied", "Bullies make fun of my physical appearance unpleasantly" and "Bullies insult me causing me to lose emotional control". Elaborating further on the Chi-square analysis measuring on the frequency of bullying behaviors, the results indicated that there were significant gender differences with regard to types of bullying behaviors such as "Being hit, beaten and punched", "Made fun of me and treated me badly", and "Being threatened to be beaten". In general, it was discovered that adolescent boys were more inclined to be involved in different types of direct and indirect bullying behaviors than girls. / Significant findings of regression analyses showed that only appraisals of school bullying to be a mediator in the relationship between levels of stress and psychological distress of school bullying. Emotional focused coping strategies and parental-support were found to be the partial mediators. Moreover, appraisals of school bullying and emotional focused coping strategies were also found to be partial mediators in the relationship between levels of stress and social distress. More importantly, appraisals of school bullying and parent-adolescent closeness were also shown to play a moderating role in the link between levels of stress and psychological distress arising from school bullying. In contrast, only problem-focused coping strategies, friendship support and parent-adolescent closeness were seen to play a moderating role in the relationship between levels of stress and social distress. (Abstract shortened by UMI.) / The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of Hong Kong adolescents involved in school bullying and to examine the stressors, perceived levels of stress, appraisals, coping strategies, coping resources and psychological consequences arising from school bullying. / The T-test analysis also highlighted the disparity between boys and girls with regard to direct bullying, indirect bullying, and levels of stress, emotional-focused coping strategies, parental support, parent-adolescent closeness and psychological distress of school bullying. The F-value of the one-way ANOVA showed that there were statistically significant grade differences in problem-focused coping strategies and parental support for the three grade groups. According to the results of correlation analyses, the levels of stress was found to have positive significant correlations with appraisal of threat, appraisal of harm, emotional focused coping strategies, social distress and psychological distress. Moreover, psychological distress was positively associated with appraisal of harm, appraisal of threat and emotional-focused coping strategies but negatively related to family support. Social distress was also found to be positively associated with appraisal of harm, appraisal of threat and emotional-focused coping strategies, however social distress was only negatively related to parental-support. / This study attempted to link the two bodies of "Bullying" and "Cognitive-transaction coping" knowledge to conceptualize "coping with stress of school bullying" as being a complex interplay between the person and the environment. This involved incorporating a cross sectional study of the quantitative approach which was comprised of two phases: Phase one was essentially the conducting of a pilot test to ensure the reliability and selection of measuring scales which would be used for the purposes of conducting the main study. These scales included "School Bullying Behavior" scale, "Levels of Stress" scale, "Appraisals of School Bullying" scale, "Adolescent Coping of Bullying" scale, "Coping Resources of Bullying" scale and the "Psychosocial Consequences of Bullying" scale. Based on a convenient sample of sixty known-case adolescent victims, the six instruments selected for the main study, were shown to have reliability coefficients exceeding 0.70 and thus only minor modifications to measuring scales were made. Based on the pre-test findings, a questionnaire comprising 170 items was developed to measure the perceptions of adolescents toward school bullying behaviors, the levels of stress encountered and appraisals of school bullying. The questionnaire also measured coping strategies adopted by students, coping resources used, psychosocial consequences of school bullying and the social demographic profile of the main study. / Law, Kin Man. / Adviser: Ma Lai Chong. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 71-01, Section: A, page: 0333. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 354-387). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education