Help Seeking Behaviors of Bullying Victims and Resources for Help

14360

The aim of the present study is to examine help seeking behaviors of adolescents who experienced traditional or cyber victimization. A total of 1369 (703 females and 666 males) high school students whose ages ranged between 14 and 18 (M = 16.17; SD = 1.04) participated in the study. The participants were given definitions of traditional and cyber bullying and asked to report whether they had a victimization experience, whether they sought for help after being victimized, and whom they asked for help. Results show that the rate of cyber victimization is 24.5 % and the rate of traditional victimization is 23.4 % among participants. Of the cyber victims 45.1 %and of the traditional victims 59.1 % reported that they received help after being victimized. For both groups parents emerged as the first source of help. Findings of the logistic regression analyses that was conducted to determine the factors related to receiving help indicate that gender significantly predicted help seeking only after cyber victimization and females were more likely to ask for help than males. For both cyber and traditional victims, as the age of the adolescents’ increased, their likelihood of receiving help increased

127

Cyber bullying victimization , traditional bullying victimization , help seeking , adolescents , logistic regression

ege journal of education

145

ege journal of education