Students' Victimization at School in Relation to their Personality

Despina Korakidi, Styliani Kotrotsiou, Mitsiou G., Elias Kourkoutas, Theodosios Paralikas, Georgia Georgitziki, Andreas Rizoulis

International Journal of Caring Sciences

English

English

School, bullying, victimization, Greece

Research

Teachers, Researchers.

1 - 20 pages

The present study aims at investigating the existence of bullying and victimization in public schools, the students' attitudes towards the school and the teachers, the relationship between bullying and dangerous behaviors outside the school, the difference between boys' and girls' response to bullying, and the consequences of bullying on the adolescents' mental health. The questionnaire for the survey is the "Scale for Behaviors and Attitudes towards Aggressiveness". The participants included 354 students (170 boys and 184 girls) of Technical Education High Schools in Larissa Prefecture, in Greece. According to the findings, 11% of the participants consider themselves bullies, while 10% consider themselves victims. There is a significant difference between boys and girls, with 17% of the boys and 12% of the girls being bullies, and 12% of the boys and 14% of the girls being victims. Moreover, 10% responded that they were gathering together and behaving badly towards some other student "at least once per week", while 10-15% of the other students who were present felt very frightened to help the victim. In addition, 50% answered that they do not like school and 25% believe that the school rules are not fair. Three quarters (75%) avoid reporting any incident of intimidation, since 50% of them believe that the teachers do not know them well, and 40% believe that the teachers do not treat them with respect. A quarter (25%) of the bullies reported being smokers and alcohol drinkers. Bullying was also found to have a serious impact on the students' mental health and socialization.
According to the conclusions of the present study, students' victimization in Greek public schools has become a problem which we should not ignore. It is of great importance to sensitize education managers, school principals, teachers, as well as students and parents in order to take action and stop the phenomenon of bullying.

This is a very interesting and comprehensive paper, conducted to describe the phenomenon of bullying in the prefecture of Larissa. It should be highlighted that the students that compose the sample of this survey come from Technical Education High Schools, which is quite rare in the studies of bullying. The structure of the paper enables it legible and intuitive. The data analysis was performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), and the statistical results are presented in detail. The results are separated in 9 sections and are shown in tables except for being described. More specifically, there were two sections about the participant's experiences concerning bullying 1) one section titled "What happened to you?" and 2) another section called "What did you do?", 3) what is happening when a student gets bullied at school (e.g. the adults' reactions), 4) child's attitude towards bullying, 5) dangerous behaviors , 6) participant's friends,
7) his/her feelings for life, 8) school, 9) parental support.
It is apparent from the above that it is about an in-depth approach that takes into account many psychological factors. Except for the confirmation of the existence of aggressive behaviour among
high school students of Larissa Prefecture, there was also found that about 10-15% of those who are present feel very afraid to help the student who is being harassed. Another important finding is that the participants expressed intense doubts about the value of the educational system, since half of them (50%) stated that they do not like school, and also expressed their doubts about the teachers, since three quarters (75%) avoid reporting any form of harassment. Finally, the study showed that bullying affects the adolescents' psychology since they replied that many times they feel sad (30%) and lonely (25%), and they generally have a sense of pessimism for the future.

http://www.caringsciences.org/volume002/issue1/Vol2_Issue1_05_Korakidi.pdf

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