Cyberbullying definitions and measurements in children and adolescents: Summarizing 20 years of global efforts

Zhu, CY (通讯作者),Wuhan Univ, Sch Polit Sci, Publ Adm, Wuhan, Peoples R China.
2022-10-25
Despite numerous instruments existing to assist in the measurement of specific cyberbullying behaviors or cyberbullying in general, it is still unclear their purpose, corresponding scenarios, and their effectiveness. This study, therefore, aims to provide a comprehensive review of academic efforts on cyberbullying definitions, measurements, and their effectiveness in children and adolescents in the past two decades. A systematic review was performed using ASReview, an open source machine learning systematic review system. Three bibliographic citation databases, including Web of Science core collection, PubMed, and EBSCO were adopted for all relevant literature published from January 2001 to August 2021. In total, twenty-five studies, mentioning seventeen cyberbullying measurement scales, met the study collection criteria. The results found that most failed to provide a clear definition of cyberbullying, often providing unclear and inconsistent descriptions for the youth. Similarly, studies found it difficult to clearly reflect the three key elements of bullying, namely: harmfulness, repetitiveness, and the power imbalance between bullies and victims. With regard to cyberbullying types, most presented two or three categories, including victimization, perpetration, and bystanding, while some suggested four types based on the nature of the cyberbullying behavior, including written or verbal, visual or sexual, character impersonation, and exclusion. If characteristics are considered, cyberbullying becomes more specific with multiple categories being proposed, including flaming (or roasting), harassment, denigration, defamation, outing, jokes, online sexual harassment, and cyberstalking. With regard to measurements, many scales have been proposed and frequently refined to capture specific cyberbullying experience of the youth. This study emphasizes the value and importance of providing clear cyberbullying definitions and helps scholars in youth cyberbullying choose appropriate measurement scales.
FRONTIERS IN PUBLIC HEALTH
卷号:10
收录类别:SCIE
语种
英语
来源机构
Huazhong University of Science & Technology; Renmin University of China; Macau University of Science & Technology; University of Sydney; University of Technology Sydney; Dalhousie University; Wuhan University
资助机构
National Natural Science Foundation of China(National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC))
资助信息
Funding This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (72104087).
被引频次(WOS)
0
被引频次(其他)
0
180天使用计数
9
2013以来使用计数
9
EISSN
2296-2565
出版年
2022-10-25
DOI
10.3389/fpubh.2022.1000504
WOS学科分类
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
学科领域
循证公共卫生
关键词
cyberbullying definition cyberbullying measurement systematic review children and adolescents ASReview