The focus of this study was to ascertain what, if any, were the commonalities and differences between and among bully-suicide victims between the ages of nine and eighteen. The focus of this study additionally was to determine to what extent, if any, was there a relationship between parent advocacy, media coverage, and/or a social event related to bully-suicide and the implementation or amending of state anti-bullying legislation. Bully-suicide victims (N = 92) from throughout the United States whose information was available through Internet search engines were included in this study. Further, state legislators (N = 50) who sponsored their states most recent anti-bullying legislation also were included. State legislators who provided direct responses to the request to participate answered four interview questions regarding their sponsorship of anti-bullying legislation. Commonalities between bully-suicide victims were analyzed to determine if particular demographics had an equal likelihood of occurrence. Legislator responses to the interview questions were analyzed for themes using a phenomenological research method. Through an examination of the research results and related literature, the researcher determined that there was a statistically significant deviation from equal likelihood of groups for bully-suicide victims who were male, high school-aged, or targeted due to appearance or sexual orientation. Further, bully-suicide victims were most frequently subjected to verbal bullying. Evaluation of the data also unveiled that parent advocacy, media coverage and social events related to bully-suicide were related to state legislator sponsorship of anti-bullying legislation
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-3095 |
| Date | 01 January 2012 |
| Creators | Benitez, Christina Marie |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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