Differences in Coping Strategies for Public and Private Face-to-Face and Cyber Victimization among Adolescents in Six Countries

Issue title: Special Section: Cultural Issues in Bullying and Cyberbullying among Children and Adolescents: Methodological Approaches for Comparative Research

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Wright, Michelle F.^{a; *} | Yanagida, Takuya^b | Ševčíková, Anna^a | Aoyama, Ikuko^c | Dědková, Lenka^a | Macháčková, Hana^a | Li, Zheng^{d; e} | Kamble, Shanmukh V.^f | Bayraktar, Fatih^{a; g} | Soudi, Shruti^f | Lei, Li^d | Shu, Chang^d

Affiliations: [a] Faculty of Social Studies, Department of Psychology, Masaryk University, Czech Republic | [b] University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Austria | [c] Shizuoka University, Office for the Promotion of Global Education Programs, Japan | [d] Renmin University of China, Department of Psychology, China | [e] University of Virginia, Curry School of Education, United States | [f] Karnatak University, Department of Psychology, India | [g] Eastern Mediterranean University, Faculty of Arts & Sciences, Department of Psychology, North Cyprus

Correspondence: [*] Address for correspondence: Michelle F. Wright, Masaryk University, Faculty of Social Studies, Department of Psychology, Brno 60200, the Czech Republic. Tel.: +420 549 49 4259; E-mail: michelle.wright@mail.muni.cz.

Abstract: The aim of this study was to examine the role of publicity (private versus public) and medium (face-to-face versus cyber) in adolescents’ coping strategies for hypothetical victimization, while also considering culture. Participants were adolescents from China, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, India, Japan, and the United States. The study also controlled for adolescents’ gender, individualism, and collectivism. Adolescents completed questionnaires on the hypothetical coping strategies that they would use for four scenarios, including public face-to-face victimization, public cyber victimization, private face-to-face victimization, and private cyber victimization. Overall, the findings revealed that adolescents relied more on avoidance, social support, retaliation, helplessness, and ignoring for public and face-to-face forms of victimization than for private and cyber forms of victimization. Cross-cultural differences in coping strategies are discussed.

Keywords: Cyber victimization, bullying, victimization, adolescence, coping strategy, cross-cultural differences

DOI: 10.3233/DEV-150179

Journal: International Journal of Developmental Science, vol. 10, no. 1-2, pp. 43-53, 2016