Comparative study of cyberbullying in Qatar and the UK: Risk Factors, Impact on Health and Solutions

Hamerton, Christopher, Davidson, Julia, Samara, Muthanna, Smith, Peter and Terry, Philip (2012) Comparative study of cyberbullying in Qatar and the UK: Risk Factors, Impact on Health and Solutions Kingston University

Abstract

Traditional and cyber-bullying are currently high-profile concerns for health
practitioners, policymakers, schools and communities. The potential for
cyberbullying has grown with the increasing penetration of networked computers and mobile phones among young people. There have been some studies on cyberbullying in the UK. However, research on traditional and cyber bullying is lacking in Qatari schools. These issues need to be investigated and addressed, since cyberbullying causes huge distress to the victim (Ybarra et al., 2006; Smith et al., 2008) and the potential breadth of the audience for cyberbullying acts serves to intensify their impact. The proposed study is a longitudinal study that investigates cyberbullying in Qatari and UK school children over 3-years (2012-2015). The objectives are to evaluate the diagnostic tools used by health practitioners when diagnosing problems related to cyberbullying; evaluate the adequacy of the current socio-legal and policy context and perform a systematic review and meta-analysis on cyberbullying studies. The study aims to describe the incidence and nature of bullying in the converged online-offline-environment experienced in both countries (age 11-16), to investigate the risk factors and consequences of cyberbullying amongst children and adolescents in a smaller sub-sample in Qatar and the UK. A qualitative study to investigate the perceptions of pupils on cyberbullying and exploring the visual representation of the personal accounts of bullying of young people from both countries will also be performed. The study will inform health practitioners, policy makers and schools of suitable intervention programmes and legalization for cyberbullying to reduce its negative impact and prevalence.

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Contributors

Author: Christopher Hamerton

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