Traditional and Cyberbullying Victimization, Psychological Distress, and Perceived Social Support among Male Students: A Quantitative Study

Abstract

Now a day, students in educational institutions often experience bullying as an important social problem which may affect the socio-psychological experiences as the spread of digital communication has extended bullying from face-to-face interactions to online environments. All these results in increasing overlap between traditional and cyberbullying. The present study explored the associations among traditional bullying, cyberbullying, psychological distress and perceived social support among university male students using a quantitative cross-sectional design. The data were collected from 99 male students. The collected data were analyzed using Pearson's product-moment correlation. The cyberbullying included various forms of online victimization. The traditional bullying represented physical, verbal and social/relational victimization whereas the psychological distress was examined by depression, anxiety and stress dimensions. Moreover, perceived social support was evaluated in relation to friends, family and significant others. The results showed a strong and positive association of traditional bullying with cyberbullying (r = .668, p < .01), with psychological distress (r = .250, p < .05) and perceived social support (r = .516, p < .01) whereas the Cyberbullying was correlated with psychological distress (r = .234, p < .05) and perceived social support (r = .805, p < .01). The study highlights that traditional and cyberbullying are interconnected forms of victimization. This victimization is closely linked with the psycho-social environment of students. The integrated institutional responses and strengthening accessible psychological and social support systems were highly recommended by the study to address both offline and online bullying.