ABSTRACT
EXAMINING THE INFLUENCE OF PERCEIVED SCHOOL CLIMATE, ANXIETY, VICTIMIZATION EXPERIENCE, AND OBSERVED DEFENDING ON BYSTANDER BEHAVIORS DURING BULLYING
Trevor W. Bixler, Ph.D. Department of Psychology Northern Illinois University, 2018 Michelle K. Demaray, Director
This dissertation was completed to delineate mechanisms that influence bystander behavior in the presence of bullying phenomena. Given the limited investigations that exist into the differences between defender role behaviors and outsider role behaviors, the current study sought to further understand the variables which promote or inhibit action when bullying phenomena occur. Defender and outsider role behaviors were examined as outcomes among a sample of Midwestern students in grades six through eight. Students’ perceptions of school climate were investigated as a predictor. The association between perceptions of school climate and bystander behaviors during bullying was proposed to be moderated by self-reported anxiety, gender, victimization experience, and the extent to which respondents have seen other students in their school put a stop to bullying.
NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY DEKALB, ILLINOIS
AUGUST 2018
EXAMINING THE INFLUENCE OF PERCEIVED SCHOOL CLIMATE, ANXIETY,
VICTIMIZATION EXPERIENCE, AND OBSERVED DEFENDING ON
BYSTANDER BEHAVIORS DURING BULLYING
BY
TREVOR BIXLER © 2018 Trevor Bixler
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
Doctoral Director: Michelle K. Demaray
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my sister, without your support, my life and this work would never have been the same. You walk through life bravely, you forgive without cause, and you love unconditionally.
You are the reason I believe that we can exist in this world in love and truth. I think of you in all that I do. To my mom, you have every talent in the world and yet you remain humble and have dedicated yourself to improving the lives of others. You taught me at a young age that each person is deserving of dignity and respect. To my father, you are the original image in my mind of what it means “to help.” I will always carry the image of you rushing out of the truck to help a car full of wrecked teenagers get out of their car. You have always put others first and done what is right. To my grandmother and grandfather, who have always believed in me and have never failed to tell me how much you brag about me to your friends. You have been the greatest cheerleaders and you have always made me feel like I am accomplishing something.
To my patient, encouraging, and kind advisor, Dr. Michelle Demaray, I can never thank you enough. Thank you for your incredible perseverance in this work. Thank you for your willingness to really think deeply about these concepts with me and growing my understanding.
You have invested in me and I will always be grateful for that. To my dynamic and awesome program director, Dr. Christine Malecki, thank you for your dedication to my growth and your unwavering support in this process. I am truly blessed to have experienced this training program.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………..….…… vi
LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………...………………………..….…… vii
LIST OF APPENDICES………………...…………………………………………..….…… viii
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION…………………..…………………………….……..……………….. 1
2. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE.……………………………….……………………… 4
Bystander Behavior During Bullying...... 5
Gender Differences in Bystander Behavior.…….…………….………….….. 6
Mental Health of Bystanders.………………………….….…………..……... 7
Anxiety……………………….…………………………………………....……….... 10
Victimization………………..………….………………………….…..…….………. 16
School Climate………………..………….………………………..…..…….………. 18
School Climate and Bystander Behaviors………………….…………..……. 21
Frequency of Defending Behaviors and School Climate..…….....………….. 25
School Climate, Anxiety, and Bystander Behaviors…………..…………….. 26
School Climate, Victimization, and Bystander Behaviors…………...……… 29
The Current Study………………..………………………………..…..…….………. 30
iv
Chapter Page
3. METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………………..……… 35
Participants……………………………...…………………………………….……... 35
Measures……………………………………………………………...…………….... 35
Anxiety…………………………………..……………………………..……. 36
Perceptions of School Climate……..………………………..…...………….. 37
Bullying Behavior Participant Questionnaire.……………………………….. 38
Frequency of Observed Defending Behaviors..…..……………….………… 39
Procedure…………………………………..……………...…………………..……... 40
4. RESULTS…………………………………………………………………..…………….. 41
Assumptions…………….…………………………..……………………...………... 41
Data Analyses……………………………………..……………...... ………….... 41
Descriptive Analyses…………………………………………..………..…… 41
Missing Data Analyses………………………………………………….…… 42
Preliminary Analyses……………….……………………..…………….…… 48
Primary Analyses……………….……………………………………...…….. 50
Research Question 1.………………………………………..……...... 51
Defender Behavior…………………...………………………. 51
Outsider Behavior.……..………………………....………….. 53
Research Question 2…………………………………...…………….. 53
Defender Behavior………………...…………………………. 54
Outsider Behavior.……..…………….…………...………….. 55
v
Chapter Page
Research Question 3……..……………...…………………………... 58
Defender Behavior………………………...…………………. 61
Outsider Behavior.……..………………….……...………….. 62
Research Question 4………………………………………...……….. 62
Defender Behavior………………………...…………………. 64
Outsider Behavior.……..………………………....………….. 67
Research Question 5………………………………….…….……...... 69
5. DISCUSSION…………..………………………………………….……………….…….. 74
REFERENCES….…………………...…………………………………………..…….….…. 87
APPENDICES…………………………………………………………………...…….……. 104
LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1. Means and Standard Deviations of Variables for Female Participants………………..… 43
2. Means and Standard Deviations of Variables for Male Participants.………………….… 44
3. Means and Standard Deviations of Variables for All Participants……….……...…….… 45
4. Intercorrelation Table for Variables Utilized Males/Females…………………...…….… 46
5. Missing Data Proportions Before Mean Imputation……...... …… 47
6. Missing Data Proportions After Mean Imputation……………………………...……….. 47
7. Regression Analysis of Incremental Predictive Ability of Social Anxiety on Defender Behavior……...…………………………………………………………………...……... 52
8. Regression Analysis of Incremental Predictive Ability of Social Anxiety on Outsider Behavior……...…………………………………………………………………….….… 54
9. Regression Analysis of Defender Behavior With Social Anxiety as a Moderator….…… 56
10. Regression Analysis of Defender Behavior With Generalized Anxiety as a Moderator... 57
11. Regression Analysis of Outsider Behavior With Social Anxiety as a Moderator..……… 59
12. Regression Analysis of Outsider Behavior With Generalized Anxiety as a Moderator… 60
13. Regression Analysis of Defender Behavior With Social Anxiety as a Moderator..……... 66
14. Regression Analysis of Defender Behavior With Generalized Anxiety as a Moderator... 68
15. Regression Analysis of Outsider Behavior With Social Anxiety as a Moderator…...... … 70
16. Regression Analysis of Outsider Behavior With Generalized Anxiety as a Moderator.... 71
17. Regression Analysis of Defending Behaviors and Independent Variables……………… 73 LIST OF FIGURES
Figure Page
1. Conceptual Model 1……………………………………………………….………… 31
2. Interaction of Perceptions of School Climate by Social Anxiety by Gender.……..… 63
3. Interaction of Perceptions of School Climate by Victimization on Defender Behavior…………………………………………………………………..…….…… 67 LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix Page
A. SCREEN FOR ANXIETY-RELATED DISORDERS GENERALIZED ANXIETY SUBSCALE…….…………………………………..……………………...……………. 105
B. SCREEN FOR ANXIETY-RELATED DISORDERS SOCIAL ANXIETY SUBSCALE……………………………………..……………………………….……… 108
C. SAFE AND RESPONSIVE SCHOOLS SAFE SCHOOLS SURVEY………………… 111
D. BULLYING PARTICIPANT BEHAVIOR QUESTIONNAIRE VICTIM SUBSCALE……………………………………………………………………….…….. 119
E. BULLYING PARTICIPANT BEHAVIOR QUESTIONNAIRE DEFENDER SUBSCALE…………………………………………………………………………..…. 122
F. BULLYING PARTICIPANT BEHAVIOR QUESTIONNAIRE OUTSIDER SUBSCALE………………..……………………………………………………………. 125 . CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
In the present day, school-based bullying remains a prevalent concern for students, families, and school staff (Wang, Iannotti, & Nansel, 2009). Prevalence rates of traditional
(face-to-face) bullying within the United States are said to hover above 30%, according to a recent meta-analysis by Modecki, Minchin, Harbaugh, Guerra, and Runions (2014). In studies of abuse, bullying, and victimization, the focus of intervention and prevention can all-to- commonly hone on individuals and groups, rather than the broader social-ecology. More often, the impact of the whole group process, such as in considering the impact of bystanders, is overlooked. In a review of the literature by Banyard, Plante, and Moynihan (2004), the authors argue that there is overwhelming empirical support for the notion that the remedy to victimization is not only within the empowerment of victimized groups, but also by the mobilization of a community that values justice for all and is unwilling to accept norms which place certain community members at-risk of degradation, such as what happens when a peer is bullied. Given this social-ecological framing, the current study focuses on bystanders as a subgroup, and the factors which may play into their willingness to intervene in bullying instances.
In contrast to children and adolescents who perpetrate acts of bullying, as well as those children and adolescents who are victimized, bystanders within bullying scenarios are only a
2 recent topic of investigation. In specific regard to school-based bullying, bystander behavior has only been consistently investigated since the mid-2000’s (Gini, Pozzoli, Borghi, &
Franzoni, 2008), despite the identification of unique bystander behaviors within bullying phenomena by Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, Bjorkqvist, Osterman, and Kaukianinen in 1996.
Bystanders are largely responsible for the amount of reinforcement which is provided to situations of bullying, as frequency of intervention is strongly associated with likeliness for bullying to occur (Menesini & Salmivalli, 2017; Salmivalli, Voeten, & Poskiparta, 2011).
Mental health of students, as it relates to bullying, has been a mainstream issue for nearly two decades in the United States, through research commonly only considers the adjustment of bullies and victims (Garandeu, Lee, & Salmivalli, 2018; McDougall &
Vaillanourt, 2015). Indeed, victims of bullying are at risk for a range of negative outcomes
(Hawker & Boulton, 2000). However, internalizing symptoms are not only associated with victimization, but may also be associated with bystander behaviors when bullying occurs.
Bystanders, who consist of those who defend victims and those who remain passive during bullying scenarios, have been typically noted to be more well-adjusted than their chronically victimized peers (Mouttappa, Valente, Gallaher, Rohrbach, & Unger 2004; Pozzoli & Gini,
2010; Salmivalli & Isaacs, 2005). However, there has been limited investigation into how complex internalizing symptoms, such as anxiety, may interact with individual and contextual variables to influence bystander behaviors during bullying. Furthermore, there has been scant research which examined how much one is able to view others defend and how this may translate into their own actions, and how much one’s victimization history plays into bystander behavior.
3 Bullying behaviors during the developmental period of adolescence occur during a period in which the peer group predominates influence (Espelage, Holt, & Henkel, 2003). The norms, roles, and expectations set by the peer groups begin to explain a significant amount of social behavior during adolescence. Social behaviors such as bullying are common actions to gain and maintain social standing, making it increasingly hard during adolescence to exercise defending actions (Pöyhönen, Juvonen, & Salmivalli, 2012). Thus, bystanders who consistently defend victims of bullying generally tend to bolster higher social status among peers (Pöyhönen et al., 2012). Additionally, research has shown that students who feel empowered and capable of defending do so at higher rates than those that feel more unprepared (Thornberg & Jungert,
2013). There has been limited investigation into how individuals come to feel (un)prepared to defend, and the current study proposed that viewing others defend and having experienced victimization personally will interact with proneness to anxiety and school climate. The current study proposed that there are vital interactions that need to be investigated that may further explain the (un)preparedness to defend touched upon by Thornberg and Jungert (2013).
Specifically, the current study will examine if the individual-level variable of trait anxiety interacts with the school climate, observed defending behaviors of others, as well as history of victimization, and gender, to predict outsider and defender behaviors during bullying.
CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
In a multi-national analysis of bullying phenomena, Cook, Williams, Guerra, Kim, and
Sadek (2010) found that 53% of the world’s youth are involved in bullying in some fashion.
Bullying involvement may vary in appearance, as children and adolescents may be behaving as perpetrators of bullying, victims, passive bystanders or outsiders, assistants, or intervening defenders (Salmivalli et al., 1996). An instance of bullying is said to be occurring when there is repetitive and intentional harm directed toward someone of actual or perceived lower status by someone of higher status (Correia & Dalbert, 2008).
Varying psychosocial correlates are associated with different bullying roles. Students who frequently perpetrate acts of bullying may be at greater risk than those non-involved in bullying for criminal involvement, poor academic performance, and internalizing distress (Ma,
Phelps, Lerner, & Lerner, 2009; Ttofi, Farrington, Lösel, & Loeber, 2011). Students who are victimized within bullying scenarios are at greater risk for social maladjustment, internalizing distress, and long-term difficulties in establishing and maintaining relationships (McDougall &
Vaillanourt, 2015). Furthermore, those outside of the bully-victim dyad, such as outsiders or defenders, have also been shown to have unique outcomes.
Outsiders are those defined by Salmivalli and colleagues (1996) as being passive observers during scenarios of bullying. Outsiders have been posed to have limited social self- efficacy, which may lead to limited insight for how to go about intervening in a bullying
5 scenario. However, defenders, or the individuals actively intervening in bullying scenarios
(Salmivalli et al., 1996), have been noted to have elevated social self-efficacy, more developed problem solving skills, and often times do not have a history of chronic victimization (Barchia
& Bussey, 2011; Thornberg & Jungert, 2013). Taken together, outsiders and defenders make up a subgroup of bullying participants that are bystanders, and bystanders have a crucial role in reinforcing the occurrence of bullying (Salmivalli et al., 2011).
Bystander Behavior During Bullying
Salmivalli and colleagues (1996) have indicated that not only are the majority of children in schools witnessing bullying occurrences (see also Craig & Pepler, 1998), but a portion of those students are acting in a way that encourages bullying through reinforcement.
Bystanders are an integral component to the maintenance of victimization. Perpetration of bullying acts peaks in adolescence, the developmental period in which influence of peer groups becomes most prevalent (for a review, see Salmivalli, 2010). Thus, bullying can be conceptualized as a way of establishing social order, and perpetration of bullying can be thought of as a means to gather higher placement in social hierarchies. As bullies tend to garner higher social ranking at the expense of humiliating and attacking peers, it would be a great cost to bystanders to intervene for the victim. Thus, aligning with the bullying behaviors and reinforcing their occurrence by either remaining silence or giving an audience is generally more protective for the bystanders (Juvonen & Galvan, 2008). Repeated bullying scenarios tend to result in relative solidification of social roles (i.e., bully, victim, outsider) and thus, the local social norms are impacted to reflect these roles.
6 Despite the increasing knowledge of the importance of bystanders, many bullying intervention and prevention programs do not include explicit bystander training components
(Ttofi & Farrington, 2011). Thus, there is a current lack of impetus to address the very group that hold partial power in reducing bullying occurrence. Bullying is most often not an indiscriminate act of violence or intimidation, but rather it is an act of strategy to maintain power over vulnerable victims and also those who are watching (Garandeau & Cillessen,
2006). However, in the raw in-vivo moments of bullying that can be relational, physical, or verbal, bystanders may lack the necessary tools that would be needed to intervene effectively
(Burn, 2009).
In regards to all investigations of individual difference variables, there is still comparatively little known about how these variables interact with the school environment to influence bystander behaviors. The action of direct intervention to help a victim is not a simple one, but a multi-step and complex process that includes multiple decision points and many branches of cognitive appraisal for events (Nickerson, Feeley, Tsay-Vogel, 2017). Thus, the feedback, through social reinforcement or punishment, individuals receive while witnessing bullying occur is critical in influencing future behavior. Social norms can either normalize or identify bullying actions as inappropriate, though either phenomenon does not reduce the stress that individuals may experience when witnessing bullying occur.
Gender Differences in Bystander Behavior
Within the bystander literature, one of the most commonly observed phenomena is that female-identifying participants tend to endorse greater defending actions than male-identifying participants (Menesini & Salmivalli, 2017; Pozzoli & Gini, 2010). In order to explain these
7 phenomena, research has turned to integration of various socialization and social-cognitive theories. One such theory is that of Ostrov and Godleski (2010), which states that males and females possess gender-typical mental illustrations and gender-atypical red-flags when behavior does not align with the gender-typical illustrations. Ostrov and Godleski (2010) posited that this is the product of heavily reinforced socialization in which males are socialized to be more aggressive and females are socialized to be more passive in nature and less aggressive. Within this theoretical framework, boys would be more likely to utilize aggression in order to obtain goals and be less likely to demonstrate prosocial behaviors within groups, as this may be flagged as gender-atypical. In contrast, girls may be more likely to demonstrate prosocial behaviors within groups and less likely to demonstrate aggressive behaviors.
Males are generally overrepresented in bullying perpetration, with one estimate placing boys in 3 out 4 students identified as frequent perpetrators of bullying (Cerezo & Ato, 2010).
Cerezo and Ato (2010) found that boys are not only more frequently involved in bullying conflict, but girls are also more involved in the school social climate. As for the finding on overrepresentation in bullying behaviors, it has been found that males possess the foundational attitudes which are more permissive of aggressive bullying actions and thus are less likely to view them as a transgression worthy of confronting. In contrast, girls tend to carry attitudes which are more likely to flag bullying behaviors, particularly overt aggression, as transgressive and worthy of correction (Gini, 2006).
Mental Health of Bystanders
The majority of research focused on mental health outcomes of youth involved in bullying has been focused on the bully and the victim (Arseneault, Bowes, & Shakoor, 2010; 8 Juvonen, Graham, & Schuster, 2003). However, it is important to understand the mental health impact for bystanders. The experience of bullying is not only distressing for victims, but also for many students who are bystanders, particularly when the identity of the victim closely aligns with that of the bystander (Charach, Pepler, & Ziegler, 1995; D’Augelli, Pilkington, &
Hershberger, 2002). However, some research has asserted that those uninvolved in bullying are significantly less likely to experience internalizing symptoms and negative perceptions of the school context than their peers who engage in bullying behaviors and their peers who are victimized (Glew, Fan, Katon, Rivara, & Kernic, 2005). Despite contradicting findings, largely due to non-uniformity in sampling and questionnaire methods, witnessing bullying actually does predict at-risk status for mental health concerns, even when adjusting for the impact of being directly involved in bullying (Rivers, Poteat, Noret, & Ashurst, 2009).
In a study of college students which required them to report on subjective trauma experienced from witnessing repetitive abuse (including bullying), it was found that college- aged students reported significantly more trauma-related symptoms in recalling their events than first responders, including police officers, firefighters, EMT/paramedics, and highway staff (Janson, Carney, Halzer, & Oh, 2009). Participants were asked in a classroom setting to imagine experiences of being bystander to a range of types of abuse in their past. Conclusions of the study indicated that bystanding to repetitive situations that are internally perceived as threatening, such as in bullying, may present the manifestation of trauma-related symptoms.
Rivers and colleagues (2009) investigated the association between bullying and nine dimensions of psychopathology among a sample of 2,002 British adolescents. Using multiple regression analyses, these researchers found that witnessing bullying accounted for between 15 and 28 percent of the various psychopathological symptoms, even when controlling for direct
9 involvement. Approximately 30 percent of the sample studied in this investigation were identified as solely witnesses to bullying.
Anxiety was among the psychopathological variables studied by Rivers et al. (2009).
Though internalizing symptoms are traditionally higher in the bully-victim dyad, some research has suggested that many adolescents may experience an influx of anxiety upon witnessing the victimization of peers (Glover, Gough, Johnson, & Cartwright, 2000). When witnessing bullying in vivo, youth have a very taxing decision-making process to undergo in an often short amount of time. Casey, Lindhorst, and Storer (2016) wrote that participants endorsed the significance of analyzing the social costs and benefits to defending a victim of bullying in their study of bystander behaviors among adolescents. Such cognitive processes have long-been studied in the context of group dynamics, often termed “subjective probability of success” or
“assessment of gains and costs” (Cartwright & Zander, 1968). In this process of cost-gains analysis, it is likely that those with greater activation of stress and greater threat perception would be more likely to avoid the potentially confrontational interaction of direct intervention.
Furthermore, therein also lies the potential of repeated exposure to environmental stressors which may predict psychopathological symptoms.
The direct association between anxiety and likeliness to defend has not yet been studied empirically. However, descriptive research shows that frequently intervening defenders carry greater social self-efficacy and higher social standing (Gini, Albiero, Benelli, & Altoe, 2008).
These are the individuals who are more resilient to social and general anxiety and more likely to perceive social reward, rather than negative consequence, from their defending actions.
10 Anxiety
Clinically significant anxiety impacts a significant amount of children and adolescents across the globe (Baxter, Vos, Scott, Ferrari, & Whiteford, 2014). The internal experience of anxiety does not always become visible, thus this estimate may be under the true count of youths who actually experience symptoms consistent with an anxiety-related disorder.
Furthermore, the discrete nature of some forms of anxiety make the detection of this distress, as well as its impact into various school-related functions, difficult to recognize.
Anxiety can be defined as the affective manifestation of physiological arousal in the wake of stressful stimuli. This definition intercorrelates stress with anxiety, postulating that anxiety represents an emotional state that is in sequence with stress responsiveness (Lazarus,
1993). Using this definition, it can be said that all humans experience anxiety at some points, as all are wired to detect threats within the environment and up-regulate the body to escape the threat. Chronic anxiety represents the dysfunction of our natural stress response, as we are wired to return to rest and homeostasis after a threat has abated.
Approximately two to seven percent of the general population will experience formally recognized symptomology along the continuum of Social Anxiety. Furthermore, it is pertinent to the discussion of this review that the mean age of onset for social anxiety disorder is approximately 15 years of age, right in mid-adolescence (Grant et al., 2005; Stein et al., 2001).
Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is marked by an intense fear of social evaluation, such that general functioning is impaired (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Furthermore, individuals who experience these symptoms typically are behaviorally avoidant, staying clear of anxiety provoking social stimuli (Lavoie, Battaglia, & Achim, 2014).
11 Social Anxiety is anchored within the umbrella of anxiety disorders. This particular form of anxiety has close ties to the experience of rejection and isolation (Crick & Grotpeter,
1995). Individuals who are socially anxious often possess biased attributions of social information, such that they may perceive intent to judge, harm, or dismiss among others when actual input from others is quite vague or is not malicious (Lavoie et al., 2014). These self- deprecating cognitions fuel a cycle of negative reinforcement (i.e., avoidance of aversive contexts) and place socially anxious individuals at further vulnerability for social rejection and victimization.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is also an anxiety disorder and is relevant to the current topics. The free-floating and generalized experience of anxiety in GAD is relatively non-specific, as compared to social anxiety, and is often expressed in the form of chronic tension and feeling out of control (Lader, 2015; Olatunji & Wolitzky-Taylor, 2009). In other words, individuals experienced GAD may have frequent appraisals that events and even their own functioning are out of their control, and frequent worrying turns to irrational thought processes. To date, no study has looked at the differentiation of anxiety symptoms within bystanders. In a review of anxiety research, Olatunji and Wolitzky-Taylor (2009) found minimal differences in anxiety sensitivity between clinical groups experiencing social anxiety and generalized anxiety, minus a slight elevation in social fears among those with social anxiety. Thus, the two forms of anxiety may have convergent predictive utility in explaining bystander behavior. What is more likely, and the proposition of the current study, is the two separate forms of anxiety will show unique associations with perceptions of school climate, and thus differentiate in their association with bystander behavior during bullying.
12 Differences in Generalized Anxiety Disorder symptoms and Social Anxiety symptoms may be difficult to differentiate at times due to converging underlying pathology, and co- morbidity is common (Blair et al., 2008). Both forms of anxiety are marked by the commonality of avoidance, worry, and are strengthened by negative reinforcement of worry cognitions. Furthermore, some research has conceptualized Social Anxiety as Generalized
Anxiety which has broadened its impact into social situations (Monk et al., 2006). However, there is neurobiological and conceptual evidence to suggest that Social Anxiety and
Generalized Anxiety are distinct from one another, despite their commonalities (Blair et al.,
2008; Wells & Carter, 2001). Whereas chronic worry is present within both Generalized
Anxiety and Social Anxiety, Generalized Anxiety symptoms are focused on a more specific kind of worry, referred to as metacognitions (Wells, 1995). Metacognitions are a more advanced form of worry, beyond general worrying, in which the individual experiences compounding anxiety from the recognition of worrying and its impact on their behavior. Wells and Carter (2001) found evidence for the notion that individuals with Generalized Anxiety symptoms have significantly heightened metacognitions than those with Social Anxiety symptoms. Furthermore, negative social information caused individuals with Social Anxiety to show heightened negative reactivity within the amygdala and other limbic structures when compared to individuals with Generalized Anxiety (Blair et al., 2008).
In 1984, Lazarus and Folkman wrote that an individual’s ability to cope with a situation is dependent upon their specific appraisal of the situation at hand. As such, one’s ability to cope appropriately with a stressful situation would be dependent upon their ability to maintain a positive outcome expectancy from the situation. Appropriate coping would mean that one is able to confront or resolve the situation internally without placing themselves in a place of
13 chronic and impairing internal activation (anxiety). Lazarus and Folkman (1984) also wrote that stable traits and learning histories impact the way in which individuals cope with stressful situations. As such, it is a likelihood that individuals who have symptoms of generalized anxiety versus social anxiety may cope differently with bullying scenarios.
Research has suggested that symptoms of anxiety increase with incidence of social rejection. In particular, Social Anxiety symptoms have been found to increase among adolescents as experiences of rejection accumulate (Vernberg, Abwender, Ewell, & Beery,
1992). Vernberg and colleagues (1992) found evidence for directionality in the association between Social Anxiety and victimization. Vernberg and colleagues found that Social Anxiety was not predictive of rejection at baseline, but symptoms of Social Anxiety increased with reporting of victimization over time. Furthermore, the intertwining of anxiety symptoms and peer intimacy and closeness have been found to be more significant for female-identifying adolescents (La Greca & Lopez, 1998).
Empirical evidence shows that the experience of anxiety is sometimes, but not always linear across adolescent development (Legerstee et al. 2013; Letcher, Sanson, Smart, &
Toumbourou, 2012). In a longitudinal study which followed adolescent males and females from
11 to 19 years of age, Legerstee et al. (2013) found gender-specific growth trajectories in anxiety symptomology, suggesting differing courses of anxiety expression over time based upon gender. Adolescent girls showed greater chronicity of symptoms, such that they had greater likelihood of showing a trajectory of compounding anxiety. That is, female participants showed greater risk of experiencing the intensification of anxiety symptoms as a function of age. These trajectories have recently been replicated and confirmed in adolescents aged 12 to
15 (Duchesne & Ratelle, 2016).
14 Gender differences in anxiety may develop early in life such that, by age six, girls have double the risk of experiencing significant and impairing anxiety than boys (Lewinsohn, Gotlib,
Lewinsohn, Seeley, & Allen, 1998). Gender even serves to modulate the predictive power of early temperament (fearfulness/inhibition) for the later development of social anxiety in adolescence, as this is only predictive for girls (Schwartz, Snidman, & Kagan, 1999). However, gender differences in experiences of internalizing distress become most apparent during the time of early and middle adolescence. Pubertal development is thought to partly influence the influx in disproportionate prevalence of anxiety. The onset of the estrous cycle means greater fluctuation in hormonal communication among female adolescents, which presents greater chance of dysfunction for stress responsivity (Marques et al., 2016).
One basic underlying theory for the development of internalizing disorders is the generic cognitive vulnerability-stress model (Beck, 1987). This model identifies individual vulnerability as a moderator between stressful, negative life events and the onset of enduring dysfunction. According to Beck’s work, some individuals carry traits that predispose them to remain maladjusted in the face of adverse events. In other words, a maladaptive response to an aversive events may lead to further maladjustment, and that process repeats in a cycle. Female adolescents are more likely to possess traits which influence greater interpersonal accountability, internalization of rules, and empathic responsiveness (Zahn-Waxler, 2010).
These very same traits predispose female adolescents to be overly self-critical, self- deprecatory, and consequentially, anxious and avoidant.
Due in part to the aforementioned reasons, female adolescents experience heightened vulnerability psychosocial stressors (Ohannessian, Lerner, Lerner, & von Eye, 1999).
Ohannessian and colleagues found that female adolescents have significantly less self-
15 competence than their male counterparts, which then creates further vulnerability for chronic symptoms and experiences that may follow negative life events, such as social rejection. Males are far from excluded from psychosocial stressors, however, relatively heightened self- competence appears to buffer from the intensification of anxiety symptomology that would move one from the mild to severe experience of anxious symptoms. For example, La Greca and
Lopez (1998) found that the linkage between social anxiety and diminished self-worth was significant for both boys and girls, however, this association was considerably stronger among girls.
It is feasible to say that social relationships present a high opportunity for risk and reward in the developmental period of adolescence. For girls, social conversation and self- disclosure makes up a significant portion of social interaction, particularly when compared to their male adolescent counterparts (Laursen & Collins, 2012). Thus there are relatively higher opportunities for slander, belittlement, and the betrayal of social trust among adolescent females. Furthermore, the impact of relational aggression and ostracism is more likely to manifest in significant internalizing symptoms among female adolescents (Storch & Masia-
Warner, 2004). Namely, these symptoms may often take the form of persistent loneliness and habitual avoidance of novel situations, all symptoms that mirror a profile of social anxiety.
These symptoms fuel feelings of uncertainty and tension toward unfamiliar or unpredictable social situations.
Adolescent girls experience a predisposition to social anxiety because of their relatively enhanced self-regulatory capacities when compared to their male counterparts. Adolescent girls are quicker to experience conditioning between negative events and “anticipatory anxiety” or the stress that is activated by the anticipation of negative consequences (Zahn-Waxler, Klimes–
16 Dougan, & Slattery, 2000). The very same processes that buffer against the development of externalizing concerns (that are disproportionately experienced by boys) in turn set the framework for anxiety-provoking cognitions. In light of these findings, it is a propelling idea to think of how adolescent girls fulfill prosocial defending roles during bullying events at higher rates than their male counterparts (Salmivalli et al., 1996; Sutton & Smith, 1999).
The associations among gender, avoidance (Social Anxiety), and defending is a promising explanatory network as individuals who are more avoidant may be more likely to be within the outside circle of social groups (La Greca, Dandes, Wick, Shaw, & Stone, 1988), making them prime candidates for bystanding. At this time, a small amount of empirical work has shown that social anxiety may increase proneness to being the recipient of victimization, though hybrid roles and defender/outsider roles have not been explicitly studied. The empirical question remains to be answered as to whether or not anxiety proneness serves to facilitate or inhibit active intervention during bullying. For example, does social anxiety work in parallel with the female identity to promote active intervention for fear of consequences of not doing so, or do particularly anxious female adolescents show significantly less defending?
Victimization
Jenkins and Frederick (2017) found that adolescents can engage in defending behaviors when they possess a certain degree of social capital, which may also be thought of as social skill needed to navigate the complex process of defending. The social capital possessed by successful defenders makes them appear more socially efficacious, are more well-liked by peers, and is also bolstered by high perceptions of support from others (Jenkins & Frederick,
2017). As such, frequent experience with victimization is likely to be incompatible with
17 frequent demonstration of defending behaviors during bullying scenarios. Indeed, barriers to defending are often identified as stemming from a lack in social support and lowered social self-efficacy (Espelage, 2015). Taken together, victimization history plays a key role in determining the likeliness of one to engage in defending actions during a scenario of bullying.
Huitsing and Veenstra (2012) found evidence for a more complex pathway to defending behaviors, one which showed even those of low social status can demonstrate defending behaviors. Huitsing and Veenstra (2012) utilized a social network analysis to determine that among elementary students, friends may band together and defend, even when they are of lower social ranking, only when they happen to be all bullied by the same individual(s). While in most cases, defenders are more well-liked by peers than victims or bullies (Olthof &
Goossens, 2008), Huitsing and Veenstra (2012) indicated that defending behaviors can appear more nuanced when investigated through dynamic methodology. In other words, “defender” may be a misnomer as defending can be context-dependent and may be more appropriately labeled with an adolescent who may engage in defending behaviors.
As aforementioned, the likeliness for victimization history to play a key role in motivating defending behaviors is high. What is less understood is how victimization may play a role in inhibiting defending actions and resulting in outsider or passive bystander behaviors during bullying. Huitsing, Snijders, Van Duijn, and Veenstra (2014) found that defending behaviors place individuals in direct risk of becoming victimized by the individuals who bully the victims they are defending. As such, peers observing this occurrence over time may be more likely to stay passive within a bullying scenario due to the vicarious punishment experienced by witnessing another defender become victimized. Additionally, this effect may
18 be exponentially intensified when you add in the variable that one may have experienced victimization themselves.
School Climate
The contemporary study of bullying phenomena emphasizes the separation from the narrow investigations of studying only student attitudes and/or perceptions in isolation. Current research methodology frequently includes consideration of how one perceives context. It is now becoming more common for studies to be more multidimensional in nature, considering the environment which may be at play to influence the expression of individual attitudes and perceptions. One such environmental (contextual) variable is school climate.
School climate is not a new concept to the bullying literature, however, there is continuing disagreement on the exact measurement and operationalization of school climate.
Nearly in parallel to its entry into research studies, the quest to operationalize climate ensued.
Currently, there is still argument that there is no unitary construct of school climate (Cohen,
McCabe, Michelli, & Pickeral, 2009). Nonetheless, aspects of climate studied, as mapped out in Uline and Tschannen-Moran (2008), include building condition (O’Neill & Oates, 2001), perceptions of teacher support as it relates to quality of learninnig (Shernoff, 2013), and a school’s intertwined presence in a community (Berner, 1993).
School climate has been identified as an agent that contributes to the observations of certain behaviors, including bullying perpetration and victimization (Nickerson, Singleton,
Schnurr, & Collen, 2014). McEvoy and Welker (2000) argue that many individual-level variables studied in social research, such as antisocial behavior, are context-specific. That is, how one perceives the setting has influence over commonly other studied individual factors,
19 with the observation of behaviors or expressions of traits becoming more or less likely dependent upon the environment. This postulate is relevant in the study of school climate as this construct is a context proven to influence the expression of various behaviors. The following summary of research aims to summarize the decades of research on school climate to extrapolate the current consensus on definition. Furthermore, the current study takes special interest in the association that exists between school climate and bullying behaviors.
As previously stated, the definitions of school climate vary from study to study, raising an important fundamental consideration. One of the primary rationales for continuing to study school climate as a construct that is a collection of many dimensions stems from the bio- ecological approach set forth from Bronfenbrenner (1979), which asserts that there are meaningful interactions that occur between individuals and their environment, and these interactions partially shape behavior. Thus, the “climate” of each school, which serves as one example of a catalyzing environment, is feasibly magnanimous in substance and more easily categorized into one summative construct.
Outside of classic social-ecological theory, one contemporary justification for validly discussing school climate as a unitary construct revolves around the concept that school climate represents a social phenomenon that is “emergent” in nature (Kozlowski & Klein, 2000). That is, school climate may be defined as the culmination of individual students’ perceptions, actions, and affective states, all induced to one context or setting that is experienced (in varying fashions) by all students. The heterogeneity of experience with climate is notable, and is why the current study conceptualizes this variable at the individual-level, rather than the school- level.
20 Relatedly, organizational research has worked to frame organizational climate for many decades, utilizing an emergent definition of workplace climate somewhat similar to school climate. However, organizational climate has an important distinction from school climate within the research base. Whereas organizational climate is defined as something that is temporal and shifting, moving as an ebb-and-flow with major events, such as successes or crises, it is work culture that is the embedded and inflexible shared belief system within the organization (Bock, Zmud, Kim, & Lee, 2005). Importantly, Bock and colleagues identified that climate can be targeted for intervention, with the intent to influence culture, as change to culture cannot be mandated or sold by individuals in the administration or the outgroup.
Though some theorists have borrowed this distinction from organizational work (Deal &
Peterson, 2010), the distinction in school settings has yet to be empirically validated.
School climate is defined here as having four broad dimensions, as outlined from one of the largest systematic reviews of school climate literature to date by Wang and Degol (2016).
School climate includes the components of learning quality, community and connectedness, and safety. These multiple components identified by this systematic review also aligns with the definition of school climate set forth by the National School Climate Center (Cohen et al.,
2009).
This now segues into the portion at which many empirical reviews break apart the dimensions of climate to discuss their respective correlations with outcomes. However, this writing would be entirely counterintuitive to the central message of this discussion. That is, the nature of this multidimensional construct is that it is a statistical representation of a complex, interdependent, and emergent variable. Research within this domain frequently neglects the gravity of this perspective. For example, one recent study investigating climate posited that
21 positive teacher-student relationships and student motivation are enhanced in contexts in which more tangible resources are available (Ramsey, Spira, Parisi, & Rebok, 2016). This study places isolated spotlight upon only one dimension of climate. The increase in performance motivation and enhanced quality of relationships are not singular byproducts of greater tools and resources. Rather, it is the culmination of perceived investment, trust, and mutual respect, which result from the culmination of the multiple dimensions of school climate.
How one perceives school climate is related to other individual-level variables. In one example of this, Turner, Reynolds, Lee, Subasic, and Bromhead (2014) used latent growth modeling and found that increases in mean anxiety and depression within a school associate with greater reporting of being victimized and perpetration of victimization. Furthermore, perceptions of school climate associated negatively with bullying in this sample of Australian adolescents. Reynolds, Lee, Turner, Bromhead, and Subasic (2017) went on later to find that school climate and social identification are intricately and significantly related, such that more positive climate enhances identification with the school and enables learning. These studies revealed two pieces of information pivotal to this topic of discussion. First, individual variables, namely individual adjustment and well-being, are important to consider with reference to how one perceives the climate and second, school climate shows promising linkage to bullying behaviors.
School Climate and Bystander Behaviors
Turner and colleagues (2014) found support for the notion that school climate interacts with the mental health and well-being of students within schools to predict the occurrence of bullying behaviors. This interaction has yet to be broken down into more specific components
22 with regard to the nuances of complex bullying phenomena. It is not yet known how internalizing symptoms vary (or do not vary) in their interactions with youth’s perceptions of school climate to predict bystander behaviors, such as active intervention or passive inaction.
Prior to entering into further discussion on the association between school climate and bullying behaviors, the distinction must be made between the two constructs. Much of the aforementioned reviews on school climate are derived from the field of educational psychology. Educational psychology has had a longstanding interest in school climate, even before it was named this, since the 1960’s (Haynes, Emmons, & Ben-Avie, 1997). Since this time, much work has intercorrelated bullying and school climate, even collapsing them into the same construct. However, the study of bullying behaviors extends beyond mere prevalence or perceptions of safety. Actually, these constructs, bullying and school safety, have been effectively studied as separated constructs (Gini, Pozzoli, Borghi, & Franzoni, 2008).
Furthermore, school climate has predicted a range of student outcomes, independent of bullying prevalence (Wang et al., 2014).
As aforementioned, the fact that school climate is “emergent” in nature makes it a fitting predictor for investigations of individual traits and bullying role fulfillment. As stated prior, Turner and colleagues (2014) found an association between internalizing (depression and anxiety) symptoms and bullying incidence. However, bullying can be thought of as both a consequent and antecedent to mean levels of internalizing issues within a sample (Hodges &
Perry, 1999). Bullying perpetration may function in a cyclical nature, stemming in part from anxious or depressive symptoms and then serving to maintain them. Importantly, this cycle is either perpetuated or remediated due to the norms that are set and abided by, based upon the quality of climate.
23 Perceptions of school climate are paramount to bullying behaviors due to the salience of social norms. The extent to which students feel bullying is normative drastically impacts the rate at which victimization occurs (Perkins, Craig, & Perkins, 2011). Climate that is perceived as inclusive and stimulating will engulf students with a sense of shared identity (Turner et al.,
2014). This identity promotes shared ownership, cooperativeness, and enhances perspective taking within a local culture that is found in each school building. Importantly, it is likely to ease the tension and stress experienced by those predisposed to anxiety.
Rinehart and Espelage (2016) found that gendered bullying is curtailed by building intolerance of sexual harassment and homophobic language and perceived commitment to end such occurrences, both of which are policies that promote positive aspects of school climate.
School climates perceived as inclusive have been shown to buffer against bullying and internalizing symptoms among youth, including LGB and Questioning youth (Birkett,
Espelage, & Koenig, 2009). This buffering effect operates through the norms that are developed and internalized among the student body. When efforts to curtail reinforcement of victimization are so salient that they are cumulatively recognized, this introduces norms that may spur more prosocial actions within the student body. Indeed, direct and concentrated efforts to be more inclusive for diverse students is crucial to building a positive climate and reducing targeted victimization. However, Rinehart and Espelage note that schools may too often think too narrowly and miss the broader context of climate, keeping in mind that climate is multidimensional.
A climate which rewards prosocial actions and punishes (from a learning theory perspective) antisocial actions speaks to the importance of interdependence theory. In the umbrella of interdependence discussions, upward or downward sociometric movement is
24 highly contingent upon the norms which shape behaviors (Kelley, 1979). In the case of bullying processes, individuals are more likely to act against bullying behaviors, in favor of their victimized peers, when this action is advantageous to their own social standing (Kelley, 1979).
When intervention consistently occurs on behalf of victims, the impact can be two-pronged.
First, defending may provide solace to victims and buffer against onset or intensification of internalizing problems for victims (Sainio, Veenstra, Huitsing, & Salmivalli, 2010). Second, defending may cease reinforcement of bullying actions, thereby decreasing the likelihood that the perpetrator(s) will repeat said behaviors (Hawkins, Pepler, & Craig, 2001).
The impact of defending behaviors is also thought to be emergent in nature. Much like how anxious and depressive symptoms cycle with bullying perpetration to feed a pattern of behavior, prosocial actions (defending) feed the spread of positive social relationships
(Ruggieri, Friemel, Sticca, Perren, & Alsaker, 2013). Positive climate is not a fix-all, however.
Ruggieri and colleagues (2013) found that prosocial individuals tend to select friends and foster close relationships with those who are also prosocial. Thus, even when context harbors prosocial norms, there will still be the consequences of ingroup selection and, in the case of those who frequently perpetrate against peers, outgroup exclusion. Thus, targeted intervention for the portion of bullying perpetrators who lack social skills will still be a necessary supplement to climate intervention.
School climate may be the crux of universal intervention to curtail bullying because it is ubiquitous. Given the convergence of the school climate construct and local social norms, school climate is a catalyst for downstream behavior modification. The norms that guide bullying behaviors are almost exclusively held and understood by the student body within each building, grade, and classroom (Hafen, Laursen, & DeLay, 2012). This holds true even though
25 there is some evidence shows adults can influence climate (Rinehart & Espelage, 2016). Given this, punishment theory would posit that the punishment of bullying behavior is much more effective as a natural, ingroup process, than from outgroup members, such as staff (Carpenter &
Matthews, 2004). Defending, when effective, may be conceptualized as a punishing event toward the perpetrator(s) of the bullying behavior, as this eliminates reinforcement of the bullying perpetration (Salmivalli et al., 2011).
Given the aforementioned research, school climate can be thought of as an organic catalyst of bullying behaviors, including the behaviors of bystanders. Pozzoli and Gini (2010) termed this force “normative peer pressure,” finding that perceived expectation from peers to be prosocial and defend actually negatively predicted passivity in bullying scenarios. It is this social-environmental reinforcement of defending behaviors that is most likely to contribute to greater occurrence of active intervention, and contexts that reward bullying perpetration and bystander passivity are most likely to maintain these respective behaviors. The “normative peer pressure” studied by Pozzoli and Gini is the artifact of positive school climate.
Frequency of Defending Behaviors and School Climate
The aforementioned coverage of the research on school climate puts forth the notion that a positive environment which is supportive and prosocial will set the stage for more prosocial behaviors (i.e., greater amounts of defending victims when bullying occurs.)
However, this assumption and past empirical finding has neglected the possibility that there is an added nuance to the contexts that promote the highest levels of defending actions. Whereas work has inferred that positive school climate may associate with greater normative expectation to defend others (Espelage, Green, & Polanin, 2012; Pozzoli, Gini, & Vieno, 2012), there may
26 be a crucial interacting variable that is missing in this equation – one of which may involve the observational learning of defending actions.
Foundational social psychological research once purported that for young people, observational learning and mental rehearsal were critical precipitants to altruistic behaviors
(Rosenhan & White, 1967). Indeed, the elicitation of prosocial actions, such as defending an excluded peers, is often predicted by exposure to another peer who has demonstrated that target behavior. For students who have perpetrated acts of bullying, intervention research has shown that morphing their behavior to be “advocates” for peers has reduced perpetration of bullying
(Midgett, Moody, Reilly, & Lyter, 2017). This suggests that, on one hand, replacement behaviors that are prosocial display efficacy in reducing bullying actions directly. However, there has been little research which has investigated the extent to which bystanders are affected by the rote frequency of defending actions.
School Climate, Anxiety, and Bystander Behaviors
Empirical work has carved a path toward the unique association among climate, bystander behavior, and anxiety. Higher prevalence of bullying within a given building is associated with increased mean student anxiety (Nishina, Juvonen, & Witkow, 2005).
Research has shown that increase may place students at further risk of perpetrating bullying or being victimized (Craig & Pepler, 1998; Kärnä, Voeten, Poskiparta, & Salmivalli, 2010;
Swearer, Song, Cary, Eagle, & Mickelson, 2001), suggesting a viscous cycle that may be maintained by poor quality of school climate. A very small portion of aforementioned empirical work dedicated to internalizing concerns among bystanders during bullying points to the notion that witness status during bullying may relate to unique psychosocial effects (Janson, Carney,
27 Hazler, & Oh, 2009; Rivers et al., 2009). That is, students who are witnesses to bullying may in fact perceive witnessed bullying as significant, and even traumatizing. However, the context in which the associations between bullying and internalizing distress manifest, and how they are related to school climate, have not yet been studied.
Given that the inherent conceptualization of school climate is that it is a sort of feedback loop, the perceptions of school climate carried by students tend to be formed by the quality of relationships perceived by the student (Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 1998). Therein lies the social-evaluative quality of school climate. When students are required to function within climates in which they perceive they are not included or they are not meeting up to social norms, higher rates of internal tension, anxiety, and lessened self-competence are observed as a consequent (Urdan & Midgley, 2003). It cannot definitively be said that school climate is the originator of trait anxiety, particularly in later developmental stages such as adolescence, however, it is plausible that unsupportive climates exacerbate symptoms and place students at greater risk of negative outcomes.
Not only does chronic anxiety place individuals place individuals at a greater likelihood of being victimized, but it also places students at a lessened likelihood that they will be defenders of victims when bullying occurs (Sainio et al., 2010; Salmivalli, Kaukiainen,
Kaistaniemi, & Lagerspetz, 1999). No work to date has delineated the unique associations with passive bystanders and anxiety, however, there is an intuitive association to be made. Given that anxiety may manifest in behavioral and social avoidance (La Greca et al., 1988), anxiety may place students at higher risk of avoiding confrontational acts during bullying, particularly if they already carry the notion that their school environment in not protective or inclusive for them.
28 Importantly, it is active intervention from peers that contributes to reduction in victimization of socially avoidant and rejected peers (Kärnä et al., 2010). Bystanders who are active and effective create an atmosphere in which bullying cannot thrive, which is one aspect that would be crucial in a positive school climate. Furthermore, defense of victims may contribute to a rise in their social self-efficacy and thus, allow them to rise on the sociometric scale. Victims have traditionally been thought to carry chronically lowered self-esteem and greater internalizing distress (Haynie et al., 2001). However, this may be only true in climates that are relatively hostile and carry strong outgroup boundaries (Nishina et al., 2005). Thus, students who experience relatively high amounts of anxiety, and are within negatively perceived climates, may have exponentially larger difficulties in exercise the social skill to defend. It has not yet been studied if positive school climate closes this discrepancy and levels the playing field to actively defend for students of all amounts of anxiety.
In a longitudinal study of nearly 700 adolescents in middle school, Kuperminc,
Leadbeater, and Blatt (2001) found that school climate moderated the associations between self-criticism and internalizing distress. When self-reported school climate was perceived as positive, inclusive, and supportive, the effect of self-critical predispositions were mitigated when compared to the internalizing distress experienced by peers in negatively perceived climates. Thus, school climate may be a crucial buffer in the association between internalizing predispositions and more significant outcomes. These findings also underscore the importance that school climate, when measured in self-report, is a perceived variable (Koth, Bradshaw, &
Leaf, 2008). That is, regardless of the objective qualities possessed by a school context, the climate must be internalized as positive to be actually protective for the students.
29 School Climate, Victimization, and Bystander Behaviors
School climate incorporates a psychosocial component, according to Low, Van Ryzin,
Brown, Smith, and Haggerty (2014), which moderates levels of student engagement in anti- bullying efforts. This psychosocial component refers to the quality of relationships that exist among peers. According to Low and colleagues (2014), student engagement and ownership in intervention is a vital part of the reduction of bullying, and increased engagement is spurred when students feel more meaningful and supportive connections with their peers. The experience of victimization thwarts feelings of closeness, as this ostracizes individuals in physical or relational ways (Cassidy, 2009).
The experience of victimization not only places students in a position of vulnerability within the school context, but victimization also impacts their likeliness of experiencing psychosocial hardships outside of the school building. In a sample of adolescents, Hay and
Meldrum (2010) found that victimization was associated with suicidal ideation and self-harm, however, these associations were mediated by clinical symptoms of anxiety, depression, and low self-worth. The internalizing symptoms studied by Hay and Meldrum (2010) were shown to have a positive association with victimization, self-harm, and suicidal ideation. Some research as shown that students may experience a buffering effect from negative outcomes in the case that they have peer advocates, however, such as defenders (Debnam, Waasdorp, &
Bradshaw, 2016). Debnam and colleagues (2016) found that adolescents at-risk for dating violence and sexual assault experienced diminished violence and risk of violence when they were in a school environment where students displayed higher defending behaviors.
30 Contrary to fragmented role fulfillment suggested by the early work of Salmivalli et al.
(1996), current work suggests that individuals may migrate in and out of bullying roles, including defending roles. In a social network analysis performed by Huitsing and Veenstra
(2012), researchers found that students of the same ingroup will defend ingroup members when they are victimized, suggesting that active intervention may be related to local social relationships. As such, it is possible that one’s personal experience with victimization may actually motivate them to engage in defending behaviors, for the sake of sparing those around them from experiencing the same hardships.
The Current Study
This study seeks to delineate whether internalizing distress, particularly anxiety, is uniquely related to bystander passivity, and if this association varies by one’s perception of school climate. The current study predicts that perceived school climate will be inversely associated to bystander passivity, or outsider role behavior, whereas perceived school climate is expected to be positively associated to defending behaviors. Importantly, the association of perceived school climate and bystander action or inaction is proposed to be moderated by self- reported generalized and social anxiety, such that there will be a significant contrast between the effect of positively and negatively perceived school climate when symptoms of anxiety are higher. Given the highly gendered nature of anxiety symptoms, it is expected that the association between school climate, anxiety, and bystander roles will vary by gender identity.
Furthermore, victimization is proposed to moderate the association between school climate, anxiety, and bystander behaviors, such that students with more frequent experiences of being
31 victimized and higher levels of anxiety will be far less likely to defend and much more likely to remain passive. The conceptual model of the current study is shown in Figure 1.
Social Generalized Anxiety Anxiety Gender Victimization Experience Perceptions of Bystander Behaviors School Climate
Frequency of Observed Defending
Figure 1. Conceptual Model 1
The current study seeks to draw an association between anxiety symptomology and bystander behavior, to place a new focus on models of bystander intervention – one which shows that internalizing predispositions impact bystander (in)action, particularly when climate is perceived in a positive or negative manner. Furthermore, the current study seeks to address more links among individual- and systems-level factors. Current research has shown that adolescents are more likely to actually intervene when they feel equipped with the behavioral and interpersonal tools to do so (Cappadocia, Weiss, & Pepler, 2012; Gini, Albiero et al., 2008;
Thornberg & Jungert, 2013). As such, the current study has special interest in displaying that the continuum of anxiety symptoms contribute to one’s likeliness to be passive when witnessing instances of bullying. The current study seeks to show that positively perceived
32 climate can be a protective factor when considering the proposed impact of anxiety on bystander behavior, such that the positive school climate provides a safe place for defending for students who experience symptoms of anxiety. Intervention implications for this model will be to provide additional and differentiated support to students at-risk for anxiety symptoms when implementing bystander intervention programming.
The current study possesses multiple research questions. First, the current study seeks to understand if social anxiety has more explanatory utility than generalized anxiety in explaining bystander behaviors during bullying. This research question is aimed to answer a question that has not yet been investigated. Though generalized anxiety is proposed to have a significant association with both defending and outsider action, the impact of social anxiety is proposed to be a more significant predictor in bystander behavior. The implications of anxiety type with regard to bullying behaviors have not been explicitly studied to date. Moreover, there is some evidence to suggest there is considerable overlap in the symptoms and subjective experience of social and generalized anxiety (Olatunji & Wolitzky-Taylor, 2009). The inherent quality of social anxiety symptoms, however, suggests the idea that a socially taxing interaction, such as an intervention during bullying, is far less likely to happen when social anxiety symptoms are elevated. Social anxiety is hypothesized to account for more variance in bystander behaviors during bullying than generalized anxiety, despite an expected significant effect of generalized anxiety independent from social anxiety.
Second, the current study seeks to understand the association between school climate, and bystander behaviors with anxiety as a moderator. Specifically, for students who experience comparatively higher levels of anxiety, while also endorsing higher school climate scores, they will demonstrate lower outsider behaviors than students with lower school climate scores.
33 Empirical studies examining bystander behavior have looked at anxiety-related emotions as they may potentiate or inhibit defending actions (Gilbert, 2000; Mazzone, Camodeca, &
Salmivalli, 2016). Importantly, these negative emotions tend to be most prominent under aversive conditions, such as in an environment that is perceived as threatening (Gilbert, 2000).
Indeed, threatening scenarios such as witnessing bullying invoke the internal cognitions that are not only distressing to individuals who experience anxiety (Mazzone et al., 2016), but are also proposed in the current study to be crippling to act in a way that would benefit the victim of bullying.
Third, gender is proposed to moderate the association between school climate, anxiety, and bystander behaviors during bullying. Female adolescents are predisposed to numerous social-cognitive and biological factors that increase the experience of anxiety when compared to their male counterparts (Legerstee et al., 2013; Letcher et al., 2012; Zahn-Waxler, 2010).
Given this, Hypothesis Three proposes that the predicted relationships between school climate, anxiety, and bystander behaviors will be stronger for female participants than male participants.
To date, there is no consistent evidence that perceptions of school climate differ by gender, despite a small portion of work that states that gender may account for a sizeable portion of the variance in perceptions of school climate (Koth et al., 2008). However, anxiety is proposed in this study to be a key player in moderating bystander behavior, and the association could be more critical for females in a non-supportive climate.
Fourth, victimization experience is also proposed to moderate the association between school climate, anxiety, and bystander behaviors during bullying. Huitsing and Veenstra (2012) found ingroup effects for bullying phenomena using social network analyses within a sample of participants in late childhood, finding that victims of the same bullies will defend other victims.
34 Indeed, bullying behaviors, including bystander behaviors, are intertwined with the local social relationships that have been established (Olthof & Goossens, 2008). However, victimization history is traditionally associated negatively with defender role fulfillment in bullying (Sainio et al., 2010; Salmivalli et al., 1999). Thus, it remains unclear if victimization history is a springboard to defend others or a source of hindrance for intervention during bullying. The current study predicts that peers high in victimization history and with higher levels of anxiety will not experience the buffering effect of positive school climate.
Fifth and lastly, frequency of observed defending behaviors is proposed to moderate the association between one’s perceived school climate and bystander action during bullying.
Pozzoli and Gini (2010) found that normative peer pressure to defend victims of bullying positively predicted active intervention and inversely predicted bystander inaction during bullying scenarios. The importance of peer influence in intervention has since been confirmed by multiple studies, finding that students who perceive the expectation to defend is present are significantly more likely to actually engage in defending behaviors (Espelage et al., 2012;
Pozzoli et al., 2012). Outside of social-cognitive research which has placed emphasis on perceptions and attitudes toward defending, few studies have looked at rote frequency as an intervening variable. Defending frequency among peers is conceptualized as a moderator rather than a mediator in the current study as it is conceptualized that defending frequency and school climate are separate constructs, though arguably not mutually exclusive.
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
Participants
Participants in this study were gathered from an extant deidentified dataset. The final sample consisted of 654 6th, 7th and 8th grade participants from one suburban middle school in the Chicagoland area. The total sample consisted of 56.2% male-identifying participants. The sample was racially and ethnically diverse with 57.7% of participants identifying as White,
13.2% as Asian, 9.5% as Black, 6.3% as Hispanic, 2% as American Indian, and 11% as two or more races. This sample is representative of the district the school building belongs to per demographic data available for review from the Illinois Report Card.
Measures
Participants completed four youth rating scales in addition to one item assessing amount of observed defending behavior at school. Scales utilized were the Screen for Anxiety-
Related Disorders (SCARED; Birmaher, Khetarpal, Cully, Brent, & McKenzie, 1995), the Safe and Responsive Schools Safe Schools Survey (SRS; Skiba, Ritter, Simmons, Peterson, Miller,
2006), one item was taken from the Revised Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (Olweus,
1996) and the Bully Participant Behavior Questionnaire (BPBQ; Summers & Demaray, 2008). 36
Anxiety
Social anxiety and generalized anxiety were assessed by 16 items from the Screen for
Anxiety-Related Disorders (SCARED; Birmaher et al., 1995). Items ask respondents to rate the frequency with which they have experienced a particular symptom in the last three months.
The SCARED has demonstrated sufficient ability in assisting anxiety sensitivity and likelihood of demonstrating an anxiety-related disorder (Birmaher et al., 1997, 1999). The SCARED shows appropriate convergent validity with measures which traditionally asses anxiety (Muris,
Merckelbach, Schmidt, & Mayer, 1998).
Participants answered items based on a three-point response scale (0-Not True or
Hardly Ever True to 3-Very True or Often True). The SCRAED consists of an inherent five- factor structure: Panic Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Separation Anxiety Disorder,
Social Anxiety Disorder, and School Avoidance. Items of interest in the current study were taken from the Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder factors. The
Generalized Anxiety Disorder subscale is composed of nine items and the Social Anxiety subscale is composed of seven items. Higher scores indicate greater likeliness of an anxiety disorder. Authors of this measure published evidence showing discriminative validity for separate anxiety forms (Birmaher et al., 1997). Test-retest reliability for the SCARED self- report ranges from = .76 to = .90 and internal consistency ranges from = .74 to = .90.
Within the current sample, the internal consistency of the Generalized Anxiety subscale was
= .88 and the internal consistency for the Social Anxiety subscale was = .83. For more information regarding the scales utilized to assess anxiety, please refer to Appendices A and B.
37 Perceptions of School Climate
In order to assess one’s perceptions of school climate, the Safe and Responsive Schools
Safe Schools Survey, a 43-item scale was used (SRS; Skiba et al., 2006). Items on this scale probed climate and effective learning (“I am proud of this school”), belongingness (“Teachers and staff accept me for who I am”), and safety (“I feel safe in my classrooms.”) Respondents select from a five-point scale (1-Strongly Disagree to 5-Strongly Agree). Negative items were reverse coded. Higher scores indicate more positive perceptions of school climate. Few data exist to display reliability and validity for the SRS measure. However, Skiba and colleagues
(2006) delineated four factors through factor analyses, with the four factors consisting of eight to 20 items.
The Connections/Climate subscale was noted by Skiba et al. (2006) to have an alpha of
.939, and items loaded onto this subscale with covariances of .51 to .82. One question on the
Connections/Climate subscale is “School rules seem reasonable.” The Incivility/Disruption subscale was noted to have an alpha of .83 and items loaded onto this subscale with covariances of .76 to .42. One question on the Incivility/Disruption subscale is “Arguments among students are common at school.” The Personal Safety subscale was noted to have an alpha of .89 and items loaded onto this subscale with covariances of .85 to .68. One question on the Personal Safety subscale is “I feel safe in the school hallway.” Finally, the
Delinquency/Major Safety subscale was noted to have an alpha of .85 and items loaded onto this subscale with covariances of .82 to .31. One question from the Delinquency/Major Safety subscale is “Students use drugs or alcohol at school.” One School Climate Summed score was totaled and mean-centered. Within the current sample the internal consistency of this scale was
38 = .81. For more information regarding the scale utilized to assess perceptions of school climate, please refer to Appendix C.
Bullying Participant Behavior Questionnaire (BPBQ)
The Bully Participant Behavior Questionnaire (BPBQ; Summers & Demaray, 2008) was designed to screen for behaviors associated with five bullying roles: those who bully, assistants to the bully, victims of bullying, defenders of victims, and outsiders. The present study focuses on bystanders of bullying and victimization history. As such, only the Defender,
Outsider, and Victim subscales were used in the present study.
Subscales assess behaviors within the last 30 days. The defender role items assess behavior related to defending or supporting the victim (“I defended someone who was being pushed, punched, or slapped”) whereas the outsider role items assess behavior related to passive bystander (“I pretended not to notice when rumors were being spread about other students”.) 20 items make up the Defender and Outsider subscale (10 per subscale) and asked to indicate their responses on a five-point frequency scale ranging from 1-Never to 5-7 or More
Times. Responses were averaged across items to yield three individual subscale scores (one for each role). Scores for each subscale could range from 5 to 50, with higher scores indicating more frequent engagement in or experiences of behaviors representative of that role. Internal consistency estimates for the BPBQ range from = .88 to = .94 for the individual subscales
(Demaray et al., 2014). Evidence of convergent and divergent validity has been established for the BPBQ (Demaray, Summers, Jenkins, & Becker, 2016). The separate subscales of Victim,
Defender, and Outsider were summed and separate summed scores were utilized and mean- centered. The internal consistency within the current sample for the Victim subscale was =
39 .88, = .86 for the Defender subscale, and = .81 for the Outsider subscale. For more information regarding the scale utilized to assess bystander behavior during bullying and victimization experience, please refer to Appendices D through F for the scale.
Frequency of Observed Defending Behaviors
Frequency of Observed Defending Behaviors was assessed via one question in which participants were asked the question, “How often do other students try to put a stop to it when a student is being bullied at school?” Participants chose from a Likert-scale response system ranging from 1-Almost Never to 5-Almost Always. This item is selected from the Revised
Olweus Bully/Victim Questionnaire (Olweus, 1996). Given that this is one item used to investigate a created construct, a publication on psychometrics by Cook and Beckman (2006) was consulted to evaluate the validity and reliability of using one-item to measure a construct.
Cook and Beckman (2006) argue that validity of measurement is determined by five considerations: content, response process, internal structure, relations to other variables, and consequences. While the condition of content is satisfied, given that the current construct is labeled “frequency of defending behaviors” as opposed to something more abstract, such as
“normative expectation to defend,” the internal structure of this variable is not interpretable due to non-applicability of a factor structure. Furthermore, while the response process is also intact, such that the measurement of frequency on Likert-scale response aligns with the variable title, there is a chance that “putting a stop” to bullying behaviors may be represented within a respondent as something other than “defending.” As such, all associations with this variable will be carefully investigated and interpretation is restricted to only the frequency in which other students view a heterogeneous class of behaviors that may cease bullying.
40 Procedure
The extant data review analyzed the dataset of 654 participants. IRB approval was obtained prior to the review. Data were collected in an all-school evaluation which utilized a passive consent process. Parents were notified of the evaluation and were permitted to opt their child out of the assessment. Student assent was obtained on the day of the evaluation. Any students who opted out of the evaluation were permitted to do so at no consequence. All data reviewed have been deidentified.
Data were collected via surveys displayed on computers within the respective school building. Teachers supervised their classes while students completed the survey measures on
Qualtrics, a tool used for computer-based research. Once completed, participants were permitted to leave their computers and carry on with their typical class schedule. Among the variables to be utilized for this study, missing data ranged from .2% to 6.4% per measure.
CHAPTER 4
RESULTS
Assumptions
Means and standard deviations of the variables were inspected for normal distribution patterns. Furthermore, linearity of variables was determined by examining plots of the residual data points. The graphs and plots of these points were inspected and determined to display linearity. Overall, the amount of cases to predictor variables was mostly over 20:1, suggesting sufficient sample size.
Data Analyses
Descriptive Analyses
Means and standard deviations of all dependent and independent variables were examined and are displayed in Tables 1, 2, and 3. Tables 1 and 2 separate means and standard deviations of the variables by gender and grade. In addition, these descriptive statistics were investigated to determine associations among study variables (intercorrelations).
Intercorrelations among variables are tabled in Table 4. To test normality of the data, a histogram and plot of residuals was inspected. In order to determine homoscedasticity and linearity, a plot of standardized residuals was also inspected. For each variable, a box-and- whisker was examined to determine the presence of any outliers.
42 Upon examination of histograms for each variable, the Defender Composite, Outsider
Composite, and the Victimization Experience scores were positively skewed, suggesting the likelihood that participants within this sample have lessened experiences with victimization, outsider actions, or the need to defend victims of bullying. However, upon examination of descriptive statistics in Tables 1, 2, and 3, there is a range of responses for each scale.
Missing Data Analyses
All data were examined in their original unaltered form in order to determine the necessity of mean imputation. Missing data counts and percentages are listed in Table 5.
Following examination of missing data in the original collection form, syntax was entered to mean impute data only if at least 80% of responses were present for each respondent per scale. In other words, a respondent must have responded to at least 8 questions on a 10- question scale in order for the missing data to be mean imputed based upon the 8 items that had responses. The proportion of participants with missing data decreased following mean imputation. Proportions of missing data following mean imputation is shown in Table 6.
Following the mean imputation using the 80% judgment rule, all missing data then were all at 4% or lower, meaning that 4% of participants or less failed to complete at least 80% of all questions for each measure. Those participants who did not complete at least 80% of each measure were then treated as missing data for the primary analyses.
43 Table 1
Means and Standard Deviations of Variables for Female Participants
Variable Female participants
6th grade 7th grade 8th grade Combined
M SD M SD M SD M SD
Defender 2.20 1.04 2.27 1.15 2.24 .99 2.24 1.04 composite
Outsider 1.31 .65 1.39 .69 1.44 .62 1.38 .68 composite
School 4.18 .62 4.02 .73 3.90 .68 4.04 .69 climate
Social 1.83 .50 2.01 .51 1.96 .57 1.93 .53 anxiety
Generalized 1.78 .52 1.92 .49 1.96 .59 1.88 .54 anxiety
Defending 2.84 1.05 2.88 1.06 2.78 1.07 2.84 1.06 frequency
Victimization 1.62 .85 1.77 .84 1.83 .86 1.73 .86 experience 44 Table 2
Means and Standard Deviations of Variables for Male Participants
Variable Male participants
6th grade 7th grade 8th grade Combined
M SD M SD M SD M SD
Defender 2.22 1.00 2.36 1.19 1.91 .83 2.18 1.04 composite
Outsider 1.36 .51 1.53 .84 1.52 .79 1.46 .71 composite
School 4.08 .60 4.05 .77 3.86 .73 4.01 .71 climate
Social 1.81 .47 1.72 .47 1.74 .46 1.76 .47 anxiety
Generalized 1.67 .47 1.64 .54 1.64 .50 1.65 .50 anxiety
Defending 2.80 1.00 2.81 1.06 2.78 1.08 2.84 1.06 frequency
Victimization 1.65 .81 1.75 .94 1.58 .76 1.66 .85 experience 45 Table 3
Means and Standard Deviations of Variables for All Participants
Variable All participants
6th grade 7th grade 8th grade Combined
M SD M SD M SD M SD
Defender 2.22 1.01 2.34 1.19 2.08 .92 2.21 1.06 composite
Outsider 1.35 .58 1.46 .75 1.49 .71 1.42 .69 composite
School 4.12 .61 4.04 .76 3.88 .70 4.03 .70 climate
Social 1.81 .49 1.83 .50 1.85 .53 1.83 .52 anxiety
Generalized 1.71 .49 1.75 .52 1.79 .58 1.74 .53 anxiety
Defending 2.84 1.01 2.85 1.11 2.77 1.07 2.76 1.08 frequency
Victimization 1.64 .83 1.80 .90 1.70 .82 1.70 .85 experience 46 Table 4
Intercorrelation Table for Variables Utilized Males\Females
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
1. Defender --- .078 -.119* -.152* -.122* .112* .288** composite
2. Outsider .257** --- -.296 .110 .145* -.091 .329** composite
3. School -.049 -.266** --- -.246** -.308** -.210** .595** climate
4. Social .009 .081 .093 --- .671** .041 .153* anxiety
5. Generalized .089 .094 -.241** .646** --- -.043 .270** anxiety
6. Defending .182** -.077 -.076 .030 -.067 --- .213* frequency
7. Victimization .250** .283** -.436** .126* .296** .284** --- experience
Note. *Correlation is significant at the p < .05 level. **Correlation is significant at the p < .01 level.
47 Table 5
Missing Data Proportions Before Mean Imputation (N = 655)
Total complete % Missing responses
Dependent variables Defender 628 4.6% Outsider 625 4.1%
Independent variables School climate 614 6.3% Social anxiety 632 3.5% Generalized anxiety 620 5.3% Victimization 628 4.1% Defending frequency 634 3.2% Gender 654 0.2%
Table 6
Missing Data Proportions After Mean Imputation (N = 655)
Total complete % Missing responses
Dependent variables Defender 642 2.0% Outsider 644 1.7%
Independent variables School climate 629 4.0% Social anxiety 645 1.5% Generalized anxiety 643 1.8% Victimization 645 1.5% Defending frequency 634 3.2% Gender 654 0.2%
48 Preliminary Analyses
A Gender (Male, Female) by Grade Level (6th, 7th, and 8th) MANOVA was conducted on the dependent variables (Defender and Outsider Composites.) Analyses revealed significant multivariate effects for Grade, Roy’s Largest Root = .012, F(2, 633), p < .05, but not Gender,
Roy’s Largest Root = .009, F(2, 632), p > .05. Additionally, there was no significant Grade by
Gender interaction, Roy’s Largest Root = .006, F(2, 633), p > .05. Upon examination of the significant effect of Grade on the dependent variables, the Outsider Composite, F(2, 633) =
3.187, p < .05, but the Defender Composite was significantly different by Grade, F(2, 633) =
2.290, p > .05. In order to further investigate the Grade differences in the Outsider Composite,
Tukey HSD post-hoc analyses were performed and examined. Endorsement of items on the
Outsider Composite between participants in 6th and 7th grade were significantly different, with participants in 6th grade reporting significantly less frequent Outsider Behaviors (M = 1.34) than participants in 7th grade (M = 1.49). No significant differences were found between participants in 6th and 8th grade or 7th and 8th grade.
A Gender (Male, Female) by Grade Level (6th, 7th, and 8th) MANOVA was conducted on the independent variables related to Anxiety (Social Anxiety and Generalized Anxiety.)
Analyses revealed significant multivariate effects for Gender, Roy’s Largest Root = .05, F(2,
632) = 15.83, p < .05, but not Grade, Roy’s Largest Root = .004, F(2, 632) = 1.43, p > .05.
Additionally, there was evidence of a significant Grade by Gender interaction, Roy’s Largest
Root = .014, F(2, 633) = 4.37, p < .05. For both Social Anxiety and Generalized Anxiety, participants who identified as female endorsed significantly higher symptoms. For Social
Anxiety, the mean of female-identifying participants was 1.93 whereas the mean of male-
49 identifying participants was 1.76. For Generalized Anxiety, the mean of female-identifying participants was 1.88 whereas the mean of male-identifying participants was 1.65.
In regards to the significant Grade by Gender interaction in the multivariate tests, Social
Anxiety demonstrated a significant Grade by Gender interaction, F(2, 641) = 3.256, p < .05.
While sixth grade male- and female-identifying participants evidenced fairly similar levels of reported Social Anxiety (M = 1.83 and M = 1.83, respectively), female-identifying participants experienced an increase in Social Anxiety levels in seventh (M = 2.01) and eighth grades (M =
1.96) while male-identifying participants appeared to decrease in reported Social Anxiety in seventh (M = 1.72) and eighth grade (M = 1.74).
Separate ANOVA’s were conducted to examine Grade and Gender differences on
Perceptions of School Climate, Victimization Experience, and Frequency of Observed
Defending Behaviors. Perceptions of School Climate significantly differed by Grade, F(5, 627)
= 2.76, p < .05. Participants in sixth grade endorsed the most positively perceived climate (M =
25.78) over students in seventh (M = 25.04) and eighth grade (M = 24.76). No significant
Grade differences were found in Perception of School Climate between seventh and eighth grade students. No differences in Gender were found for Perceptions of School Climate, F(5.
627) = .012, p > .05. Lastly, the GenderXGrade interaction for Perceptions of School Climate was non-significant, F(2, 627) = .124, p > .05.
Frequency of Observed Defending Behaviors significantly differed by Grade, F(5, 627)
= 3.86, p < .05, and Gender, F(5, 627) = 4.05, p < .05 . Participants in seventh grade viewed more frequent defending behaviors (M = 2.86) than participants in eighth grade (M = 2.59.)
Participants in sixth grade (M = 2.84) demonstrated comparable rates of viewed defending behaviors to students in seventh grade. Furthermore, participants who identified as female
50 viewed higher rates of defending (M = 2.84) than participants who identified as male (M =
2.61). The GenderXGrade interaction for was non-significant for Observed Defending
Behaviors, F(2, 632) = 1.73, p > .05.
Lastly, an ANOVA was performed to examine Grade and Gender effects on
Victimization Experience. There were no Gender, F(5, 643) = 1.28, p > .05, nor Grade, F(5,
643) = 1.19, p > .05, differences in on the Victimization score in the current study.
Furthermore, the GenderXGrade interaction was non-significant for Victimization, F(2, 643) =
1.54, p > .05.
Primary Analyses
A series of regressions were conducted to answer Research Questions One through
Five. The regression model ran for Research Question One is presented in Tables 7 and 8. The regression models ran for Research Questions Two and Three are presented in Tables 9, 10, 11, and 12. The regression models ran for Research Question Four are presented in Tables 13, 14,
15, and 16. The regression model ran for Research Question Five is presented in Table 17. All continuous predictors were mean-centered and Gender was dummy coded as 0 = male and 1 = female. Interaction effects were graphed using line graphs within Microsoft Excel. Simple slopes for interaction effects were assessed via an algorithm established within Microsoft Excel which examined the significance of each line gradient. Values at the mean and one standard deviation above and below the mean were examined.
51 Research Question 1
Research Question One examined the utility of social anxiety to explain bystander behavior above and beyond generalized anxiety and if these associations differed by gender.
In order to answer Research Question One, two stepwise regression models were examined. In Step One of each regression model, Generalized Anxiety was entered alongside
Gender (Male = 0, Female = 1). In Step Two of each regression model, Social Anxiety was entered. In Step Three of each regression model, a Gender by Anxiety interaction term was entered to examine if the associations differed by gender. Two separate regression models were examined with two separate dependent variables: Defender Behavior and Outsider
Behavior.
Defender Behavior. Hypotheses One stated that Social Anxiety would be significantly associated with Defender Behavior above and beyond Generalized Anxiety. In Step One of the regression model shown in Table 7, the independent variables were non-significant in their association with Defender Behavior, ∆R2 > .05, R2 =.001, F(2,630) = .30, p > .05. Step Two of the regression model examining Defender Behavior was also non-significant in predicting
Defender Behavior and resulted in a non-significant change in R-squared, ∆R2 > .05, R2 =.01,
F(2, 629) = 2.25, p > .05. Step Three of the regression including Gender interactions was significant. In this regression, however, none of the independent variables were significant individual predictors of Defender Behavior. Results of this regression are shown in Table 7.
52 Table 7
Regression Analysis of Incremental Predictive Ability of Social Anxiety on Defender Behavior
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .00 .00 Generalized anxiety -.02 .08 -.01 Gender -.07 .09 -.03
2 .01 .01* Social anxiety -.22* .11* -.11* Generalized anxiety .12 .11 .06
Gender -.07 .09 -.03
3 .02* .01* Social anxiety -.25 .16 -.12 Generalized anxiety -.07 .16 -.14
Gender -.08 .09 -.04 Social anxiety X gender .07 .21 .02 Generalized anxiety X gender .37 .21 .13 ______Note. *Significant at the .05 level.
53 Outsider Behavior. Stepwise regression analysis showed that Step One of the regression model shown in Table 8, which included Generalized Anxiety and Gender, was significant in predicting outsider behavior, R2 =.010, F(2, 633) = 3.33, p < .05. In Step One, both
Generalized Anxiety, = .12, t(633) = 2.91, p < .05, and Gender, = .09, t(633) = 2.23, p <
.05, were significantly and positively associated with Outsider Behavior. In Step 2, the ∆R2 was not significant by adding Social Anxiety, although the model in Step 2 was still significant,
∆R2 > .05, R2 =.02, F(3, 633) = 2.25, p < .05. Steps Two and Three were not interpreted due to the non-significant change in R-squared. Results of this regression analysis are displayed in
Table 8.
Research Question 2
Research Question Two examined if Anxiety moderates the associations between School
Climate and outsider and defender behaviors.
In order to answer Research Question Two, four multiple regression analyses were conducted. One regression model was conducted which examined Social Anxiety as a moderator between School Climate and Defender Behavior as an outcome. One regression model was conducted which examined Generalized Anxiety as a moderator between
Perceptions of School Climate as an independent variable and Defender Behavior as an outcome. One regression model was conducted which examined Social Anxiety as a moderator between Perceptions of School Climate as an independent variable and Outsider Behavior as an outcome. Lastly, one regression model was conducted which examined Generalized anxiety as a moderator between Perceptions of School Climate as an independent variable and Outsider
54 Table 8
Regression Analysis of Incremental Predictive Ability of Social Anxiety on Outsider Behavior
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .02** .02** Generalized anxiety .15** .05** .12** Gender .12** .06** .09**
2 .02** .00 Social anxiety .04 .07 .03 Generalized anxiety .12 .07 .10 Gender .12** .05** .09**
3 .02** .00 Social anxiety .03 .10 .03 Generalized anxiety .15 .10 .12 Gender .12** .06** .09** Social anxiety X gender .03 .14 .01 Generalized anxiety X gender -.05 .14 -.03 Note. **Significant at the .01 level.
Behavior as an outcome. In models examining Social Anxiety as a moderator, the independent variables of Social Anxiety, Gender (Male = 0, Female = 1), and Perceptions of School
Climate, were entered in Step One. In models examining Generalized Anxiety as a moderator, the independent variables of Generalized Anxiety, Gender, and Perceptions of School Climate were entered in Step One. All two-way interactions were entered in Step Two, and three-way interactions were entered in Step Three.
Defender Behavior. Hypothesis Three predicted that Social Anxiety and Generalized
Anxiety would moderate the association between Perceptions of School Climate and Defender
Behavior. Specifically, Hypothesis Three stated that Generalized Anxiety and Social Anxiety would moderate the association between School Climate and Defender behaviors, such that
55 Defending Behavior would be lowest when School Climate was perceived as poor and symptoms of anxiety were higher.
For Social Anxiety, examination of the model (Table 9) revealed Step One of the regression model was significant. Perceptions of School Climate was negative associated with
Defender Behaviors, = -.20, t(617) = -2.41, p < .05. Social Anxiety was also negatively associated with Defender Behaviors, = -.18, t(617) = -2.11, p < .05. Step Two of the model, which included the proposed two-way interaction, was a non-significant change in R-squared,
∆R2 > .05, R2 = .03, F(6, 617) = 2.85, p > .05. Thus, the two- and three-way interactions was not examined in Step Two and Step Three were not interpreted.
Generalized Anxiety also did not moderate the association between Perceptions of
School Climate and Defender Behavior as proposed. Step One of the model shown in Table 10 demonstrated that the individual predictors of Perceptions of School Climate, Generalized
Anxiety, and Gender were non-significant in predicting Defender Behavior, ∆R2 > .05, R2 =
.01, F(3, 616) = 1.78, p > .05. Thus, higher steps were not interpreted, even though Step Two of the model shown in Table 10 demonstrated significance, ∆R2 < .05, R2 = .03, , F(6,616) = 2.88, p < .05. Social Anxiety did not moderate the association between Perceptions of School
Climate and Defender Behavior, F(7, 616) = 10.22, p > .05.
Outsider Behavior. Hypothesis Four predicted that Social Anxiety and Generalized
Anxiety would moderate the association between Perceptions of School Climate and Outsider behaviors, such that outsider behaviors would be highest when School Climate was perceived as poor and symptoms of anxiety were higher.
56 Table 9
Regression Analysis of Defender Behavior With Social Anxiety as a Moderator
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .02* .02* Perceptions of school climate -.20* .08* -.10* Social anxiety -.18* .09* -.09* Gender -.09 .09 -.04
2 .03 .01 Perceptions of school climate -.32* .13* -.16* Social anxiety -.40** .12** -.19** Gender -.09 .09 -.04 Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety -.15 .14 -.05 Perceptions of school climate X gender .20 .17 .07 Social anxiety X gender .39* .17* .13*
3 .04* .01 Perceptions of school climate -.36** .13** -.18** Social Anxiety -.38** .12** -.19** Gender -.12 .09 -.06 Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety .16 .20 .05 Perceptions of school climate X gender .22 .17 .08 Social anxiety X gender .34 .17 .11 Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety X gender -.61** .28** -.13** ______Note. *Significant at the .05 level. **Significant at the .01 level.
57 Table 10
Regression Analysis of Defender Behavior With Generalized Anxiety as a Moderator
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .01 .01 Perceptions of school climate -.19* .09* -.09* Generalized anxiety -.07 .08 -.04 Gender -.07 .09 -.03 2 .03** .01** Perceptions of school climate -.32* .13* -.16* Generalized anxiety -.37** .12** -.19** Gender -.08 .09 -.04 Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety -.14 .13 -.04 Perceptions of school climate X gender .25 .17 .09 Generalized anxiety X gender .52** .17** .19**
3 .04* .01 Perceptions of school climate -.38** .13** -.19** Generalized anxiety -.34** .12** -.17** Gender -.13 .09 -.06 Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety .16 .19 .05 Perceptions of school climate X gender .29 .17 .10 Generalized anxiety X gender .45 .17 .16 Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety X gender -.56** .26** -.13** ______Note. *Significant at the .05 level. **Significant at the .01 level.
58 For Social Anxiety, Step One of the model shown in Table 11 was significant and Step
Two was also significant, ∆R2 < .05, R2 = .10, F(2, 616) = 11.32, p < .05. In Step Two, Social
Anxiety moderated the association between Perceptions of School Climate and Outsider
Behavior, = -.29, t(616) = -3.32, p < .05 (see Table 11.) However, a higher-order interaction term was predicted in the next Research Question (Question Three) and is shown in a later figure. Although Social Anxiety moderated the association between Perceptions of School
Climate and Outsider Behavior, this association is best explained with inclusion of Gender as an additional moderating variable as in the next Research Question.
In the model which examined Generalized Anxiety as a moderator (Table 12), Step One was significant. Perceptions of School Climate was shown to be a significant and negatively related to Outsider Behavior as displayed in Table 12, = -.35, t(616) = -6.66, p < .05. Step
Two of the model resulted in a non-significant ∆R2, thus two-way interactions were not interpreted, ∆R2 > .05, R2 = .03, F(9, 619) = -1.23, p < .05. Step Three was also not interpreted due to the non-significant ∆R2.
Research Question 3
Research Question Three examined if Gender moderated the association between
Perceptions of School Climate and Social Anxiety and Generalized Anxiety with Defender and
Outsider behaviors.
In order to answer Research Question Three, four multiple regression analyses were conducted. One regression model was conducted which examined Social Anxiety as a moderator between School Climate and Defender Behavior as an outcome. One regression
59 Table 11
Regression Analysis of Outsider Behavior With Social Anxiety as a Moderator
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .08*** .08***
Perceptions of school climate -.35*** .05*** -.27*** Social anxiety -.18* .09* -.09* Gender .09 .05 .07 2 .10*** .02** Perceptions of school climate -.31*** .08***-.23*** Social anxiety .02 .07 .02 Gender .10 .05 .08 Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety -.29** .09** -.13** Perceptions of school climate X gender -.08 .11 -.04 Social anxiety X gender .04 .11 .02 3 .12*** .02** Perceptions of school climate -.35*** .08*** -.26*** Social anxiety .04** .08** .03** Gender .07 .05 .05 Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety .01 .12 .01 Perceptions of school climate X gender -.06 .10 -.03 Social anxiety X gender -.01 .11 -.01 Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety X gender -.59** .17** -.19** ______Note. *Significant at the .05 level. **Significant at the .01 level. ***Significant at the .001 level.
60 Table 12
Regression Analysis of Outsider Behavior With Generalized Anxiety as a Moderator
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .08*** .08***
Perceptions of school climate -.35*** .05*** -.26*** Generalized anxiety .06 .05 .05 Gender .10 .05 .07 2 .09*** .01
Perceptions of school climate -.30*** .08*** -.23*** Generalized anxiety .05 .08 .04 Gender .10 .05 .07 Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety -.19* .08* -.09* Perceptions of school climate X gender -.07 .11 -.04 Generalized anxiety X gender -.02 .11 -.01 3 .10*** .01**
Perceptions of school climate -.34*** .08*** -.26*** Generalized anxiety .07 .08 .05 Gender .06 .06 .05 Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety .03 .12 .01 Perceptions of school climate X gender -.04 .11 -.02 Generalized anxiety X gender -.08 .11 -.04 Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety X gender -.41** .16** -.15** ______Note. **Significant at the .01 level. ***Significant at the .001 level.
61 model was conducted which examined Generalized Anxiety as a moderator, Perceptions of
School Climate as an independent variable, and Defender Behavior as an outcome. One regression model was conducted which examined Social Anxiety as a moderator, Perceptions of School Climate as an independent variable, and Outsider Behavior as an outcome. Lastly, one regression model was conducted which examined Generalized anxiety as a moderator,
Perceptions of School Climate as an independent variable, and Outsider Behavior as an outcome. In models examining Social Anxiety as a moderator, the independent variables of
Social Anxiety, Gender (Male = 0, Female = 1), and Perceptions of School Climate, were entered in Step One. In models examining Generalized Anxiety as a moderator, the independent variables of Generalized Anxiety, Gender, and Perceptions of School Climate were entered in Step One. All two-way interactions were entered in Step Two, and three-way interactions were entered in Step Three.
Defender Behavior. Hypothesis Five stated that Gender would moderate the association between Perceptions of School Climate, Generalized Anxiety, Social Anxiety, and Defender
Behavior. Step One of the Regression model examining Social Anxiety demonstrated in Table
9 was significant, however, Step Two of the regression model shown in Table 9 resulted in a non-significant change in R-squared , ∆R2 > .05, R2 =.03 F(6, 617) = 2.86, p < .001. Thus, interpretation stopped after Step One and Hypothesis Five was not confirmed.
The proposed three-way interaction focused on Generalized Anxiety was not able to be interpreted as Step One of the regression model shown in Table 10 was unexpectedly non- significant in explaining Defender Behavior, ∆R2 > .05, R2 =.01, F(3, 616) = 1.78, p > .05.
Thus, higher order interaction terms were not interpreted. Step One was not interpreted nor were Steps Two or Three.
62 Outsider Behavior. Gender moderated the association between Perceptions of School
Climate, Social Anxiety, and Outsider Behavior (Table 11) Step One and Two of the regression models shown in Table 11 were significant. Additionally, Step Three of the regression model shown in Table 11 was significant ∆R2 < .05, R2 =.11, F(7, 620) = 11.58, p <
.05. The proposed three-way interaction was significant, = -.59 t(620) = -3.45, p < .05, and is displayed in Figure 2. The slopes of the associations were assessed to determine which associations were significantly moderated by gender. All slopes were significant with the exception of male-identifying participants reporting higher amounts of social anxiety, for which
Perceptions of School Climate was not effective in explaining Outsider Behavior, = -.12, t(621) = -1.07, p > .05. In addition to the significant three-way interaction displayed in Figure
2, Perceptions of School Climate was once again significant and negatively associated with
Outsider Behaviors in Step Three of the regression model, = -.31 t(620) = -4.45, p < .05.
In regards to Generalized Anxiety, Gender did not moderate the association between
Perceptions of School Climate, Generalized Anxiety, and Outsider Behavior. Step One of the regression equation shown in Table 12 was significant, F(3, 619) = 18.24, p < .05. Perceptions of School Climate was negatively associated with Outsider Behavior = -.348 t(620) = -2.45, p < .05. Step Two was not a significant change in R-squared, ∆R2 > .05, R2 =.09, F(6, 619) =
10.04 (see Table 12.) As such, two- and three-way interactions were not interpreted.
Research Question 4
Research Question Four examined if Victimization moderates the association of
Perceptions of School Climate and Generalized Anxiety and Social Anxiety with Defender and
63
Figure 2. Interaction of Perceptions of School Climate by Social Anxiety by Gender
64 Outsider Behaviors.
In order to answer Research Question Four, four multiple regression analyses were conducted. One regression model was conducted which examined Social Anxiety as a moderator between School Climate and Defender Behavior as an outcome. One regression model was conducted which examined Generalized Anxiety as a moderator, Perceptions of
School Climate as an independent variable, and Defender Behavior as an outcome. One regression model was conducted which examined Social Anxiety as a moderator, Perceptions of School Climate as an independent variable, and Outsider Behavior as an outcome. Lastly, one regression model was conducted which examined Generalized anxiety as a moderator,
Perceptions of School Climate as an independent variable, and Outsider Behavior as an outcome
In Step One of each regression model, independent variables were entered. In models examining Social Anxiety as a moderator, the independent variables of Social Anxiety,
Perceptions of School Climate, and Victimization Experience were entered in Step One. In models examining Generalized Anxiety as a moderator, the independent variables of
Generalized Anxiety, Perceptions of School Climate, and Victimization were entered in Step
One. All two-way interactions were entered in Step Two, and three-way interactions were entered in Step Three.
Defender Behavior. Hypothesis 7 predicted that Victimization experience would moderate the association between School Climate and Social and Social Anxiety with Defender behaviors, such that individuals with lower amount of experience being victimized would have higher rates of Defending when Anxiety was lower and School Climate was perceived as more positive.
65 In regards to Social Anxiety, Victimization did not moderate the association between
Perceptions of School Climate, Social Anxiety, and Defender Behavior, Step One of the regression model shown in Table 13 was significant, followed by Step Two of the regression model being significant, ∆R2 < .05, R2 =.11, F(6, 617) = 12.12, p < .05. Social Anxiety was
Inversely associated with Defender Behavior, = -.23, t(616) = -2.34, p < .05, and
Victimization was positively associated with Defender Behavior, = .32, t(616) = 3.01, p <
.05 in Step Two. However, the three-way interaction entered was a non-significant change in
R-squared, ∆R2 > .05, R2 = .12, F(7, 617) = 10.63, p < .05. In Step Two, the interaction of
Perceptions of School Climate by Victimization was a significant predictor in Defender
Behavior, = -.212, t(616) = -2.26, p < .05. This interaction is shown in Figure 3. Simple slopes of the interaction were tested at one standard deviation below (SD -1) and above (SD
+1) the mean, as well as at the mean. Whereas the association between Perceptions of School
Climate and Defender behavior was significant for those who had experienced lower (SD -1),
= .36, t(616) = 2.93, p < .05, and moderate (mean) amounts, = .21, t(616) = 2.19, p < .05, of Victimization, the same was not true of those who had experienced higher (SD +1) amounts of Victimization, = .06, t(616) = .54, p > .05.
In regards to Generalized Anxiety, Victimization experience did not moderate the association between Perceptions of School Climate, Generalized Anxiety, and Defender
Behavior. Step One and Step Two of the model shown in Table 14 were significant, ∆R2 < .05,
R2 =.11, F(6, 616) = 13.94, p < .05. Within Step Two, Generalized Anxiety was negatively associated with Defender Behavior, = -.16, t(619) = -1.98, p < .05. Victimization was
66 Table 13
Regression Analysis of Defender Behavior With Social Anxiety as a Moderator
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .09*** .09***
Perceptions of school climate .14 .09 .07 Social anxiety -.227** .08** -.11** Victimization .41*** .06*** .33*** 2 .11*** .02**
Perceptions of school climate .19 .09 .09 Social anxiety -.23** .08** -.11** Victimization .32*** .06*** .26*** Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety .11 .16 .03 Perceptions of school climate X victimization -.21** .08** -.15** Social anxiety X victimization .04 .10 .02 3 .11*** .000
Perceptions of school climate .21** .10** .10** Social anxiety -.26** .09** -.12** Victimization .32*** .06*** .26*** Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety .16 .17 .05 Perceptions of school climate X victimization -.18** .08** -.12** Social anxiety X victimization -.038 .121 -.02 Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety X victimization -.16 .13 -.08 ______Note. **Significant at the .01 level. ***Significant at the .001 level.
67
Figure 3. Interaction of Perceptions of School Climate by Victimization on Defender Behavior
positively associated with Defender Behavior, = .34, t(619) = 5.15, p < .05. Perceptions of
School Climate was positively associated with Defender Behavior, = .19, t(619) = 2.04, p <
.05. Step Three of the regression model shown in Table 14 resulted in a non-significant change in R-squared, ∆R2 > .05, R2 =.11, F(7, 616) = 10.19, p < .05. As such, the proposed three-way interaction of Perceptions of School Climate, Generalized Anxiety, and Victimization was not interpreted.
Outsider Behavior. Hypothesis 8 predicted that Victimization experience would moderate the association between School Climate and Social and Generalized Anxiety with
Outsider behaviors, such that individuals with higher amount of experience being victimized would have higher rates of Outsider behaviors when Anxiety was higher and School Climate
68 Table 14
Regression Analysis of Defender Behavior With Generalized Anxiety as a Moderator
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .09*** .09***
Perceptions of school climate .14 .09 .07 Generalized anxiety -.18** .08** -.09** Victimization .42*** .06*** .34*** 2 .11*** .02**
Perceptions of school climate .19** .09** .09** Generalized anxiety -.16** .08** -.11** Victimization .34*** .07*** .28*** Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety .06 .16 .02 Perceptions of school climate X victimization -.25** .08** -.17** Generalized anxiety X victimization -.13 .10 -.07 3 .11*** .000
Perceptions of school climate .19** .10** .09** Generalized anxiety -.16 .08 -.03 Victimization .34*** .07*** .28*** Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety .07 .17 .02 Perceptions of school climate X victimization -.24** .08** -.17** Generalized anxiety X victimization -.14 .12 -.07 Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety X gender -.03 .12 -.02
______Note. **Significant at the .01 level. ***Significant at the .001 level.
69 was perceived as more negative.
For Social Anxiety, Step One of the regression model in Table 15 was significant, Steps
Two and Step Three of the regression equation shown in Table 15 were non-significant changes in R-squared, ∆R2 > .05, R2 = .12, F(7, 620) = 12.00, p < .001. As such, Victimization did not moderate the association between Perceptions of School Climate, Social Anxiety and Outsider
Behavior. In Step One, Victimization was positively associated with Outsider Behavior, =
.16, t(619) = 1.98, p < .05, and Perceptions of School Climate was inversely associated with
Outsider Behavior, = -.22, t(619) = -2.01, p < .05
For Generalized Anxiety, Step One of the regression model shown in Table 16 was significant in predicting Outsider Behavior, R2 = .11, F(3, 619) = 24.62, p < .001.
Victimization was positively associated with Outsider Behavior, = .17, t(619) = 4.61, p <
.001. Perceptions of School Climate was negatively associated with Outsider Behavior, = -
.23, t(619) = -3.86, p < .001. Step Two of the regression model shown in Table 16 was a non- significant change in R-squared, R2 = .12, ∆R2 > .05, F(5, 619) = 11.88, p < .001,
Victimization did not moderate the association of Perceptions of School Climate,
Generalized Anxiety, and Outsider Behavior due to Step Three being non-significant change in
R-squared, ∆R2 > .05, R2 = .11, F(7, 619) = 15.17, p < .001. Thus, Steps Two and Three of the regression model shown in Table 14 were not interpreted due to the non-significant addition to
R-squared.
Research Question 5
Research Question Five asked if observations of defending behaviors from peers
70 Table 15
Regression Analysis of Outsider Behavior With Social Anxiety as a Moderator
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .11*** .11*** Perceptions of school climate -.22*** .06*** -.17*** Social anxiety .04 .05 .03 Victimization .16*** .04*** .20*** 2 .12*** .01 Perceptions of school climate -.23*** .06*** -.18*** Social anxiety .02 .05 .01 Victimization .15*** .04*** .18*** Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety -.20 .10 -.09 Perceptions of school climate X victimization .00 .05 .00 Social anxiety X victimization .02 .07 .01 3 .12*** .00
Perceptions of school climate -.22*** .06*** -.17*** Social anxiety -.00 .06 -.00 Victimization .15** .04** .18** Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety -.17 .11 -.07 Perceptions of school climate X victimization .03 .05 .03 Social anxiety X victimization -.05 .08 -.04 Perceptions of school climate X social anxiety X gender -.13 .08 -.10 ______Note. **Significant at the .01 level. ***Significant at the .001 level.
71 Table 16
Regression Analysis of Outsider Behavior With Generalized Anxiety as a Moderator
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .11*** .11***
Perceptions of school climate -.23*** .06*** -.17*** Generalized anxiety .01 .05 -.01 Victimization .17*** .04*** .21***
2 .11*** .00 Perceptions of school climate -.24*** .06*** -.18*** Generalized anxiety -.01 .05 -.01 Victimization .17*** .04*** .21*** Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety -.23 .10 -.11 Perceptions of school climate X victimization -.04 .05 -.04 Generalized anxiety X victimization -.16** .06** -.13** 3 .12*** .01 Perceptions of school climate -.24*** .06*** -.18*** Generalized anxiety -.01 .05 -.01 Victimization .17*** .04*** .21*** Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety -.24** .11** -.12** Perceptions of school climate X victimization -.04 .05 -.05 Generalized anxiety X victimization -.15** .07** -.12** Perceptions of school climate X generalized anxiety X gender .03 .07 .02 ______Note. **Significant at the .01 level. ***Significant at the .001 level.
72 moderate the association between perceived school climate and defender behavior during bullying.
Research Question Five was investigated by examining a hierarchical regression model with the dependent variable of Defender Behavior. In Step One, Perceptions of School Climate and Frequency of Observed Defending Behaviors were entered. In Step Two, the interaction term of Perceptions of School Climate X Frequency of Observed Defending Behaviors was entered.
Hypothesis 9 predicted that Frequency of Observed Defending Behaviors would moderate the association between Perceptions of School Climate and Defender Behaviors such that Defender Behaviors would be highest when Perceptions of School Climate was high and
Frequency of Observed Defending Behaviors was high. In contrast, Defender Behaviors would be lowest when Perceptions of School Climate was Low and Observations of Defending
Behaviors was low.
In examination of Step One, which included the main effects, Frequency of Observed
Defending Behavior did positively associate with Defender Behavior, = .21, t(609) = 5.17, p
< .001. Once again, Perceptions of School Climate associated negatively with Defender
Behavior, = −.29, t(609) = -3.44, p < .05. In Step Two, the change in R-squared was nonsignificant, ∆R2 > .05, R2 =.05, F(3, 609) = 10.19, p < .05. Thus, interpretation ceased. See
Table 17.
73 Table 17
Regression Analysis of Defending Behaviors and Independent Variables
2 2 Step Independent variable B SE B R ∆R 1 .05*** .05*** Perceptions of school -.29*** .04*** .22*** climate
Frequency of .21*** .07*** -.14*** observed defending behavior
2 .05*** .31 Perceptions of school -.12 .18 -.06 climate
Frequency of .50 .28 .50 observed defending behavior
Perceptions of school -.07 .07 -.32 climate X frequency of defending behavior
______Note. ***Significant at the .001 level.
CHAPTER 5
DISCUSSION
The overall aim of the current study was to investigate the associations that exist among bystander behavior during bullying behavior and internal variables which may serve to encourage or inhibit action. The current study focused not only on trait variables, such as the experience, or proneness to symptoms of social and generalized anxiety, but also variables such as perceived school climate and victimization experience, which may be more transient and based upon dynamic experiences. To date, an accumulation of theoretical and practical work has suggested that adolescents who carry more social capital may be more equipped to intervene and act in defense of victims when bullying scenarios occur. In one recent study, the absence of social capital was referred to as “social capital deprivation,” which referred to negative norms and experienced victimization. This was significantly associated with negative, unhelpful bystander behavior (Evans & Smokowski, 2017).
Internalizing distress, such as the experience of anxiety, has been noted to make one less likely to obtain and maintain social capitol. Anxious adolescents are more likely to be victimized (Pabian & Vandebosch, 2016) and less likely to maintain high levels of social self- efficacy (Bandura, 1993), making them less likely to fill positions of high social power among adolescent social hierarchies. The current study expanded on this idea by examining the interaction of one’s perceived school climate and proneness to experience symptoms of
75 generalized, free-floating anxiety and social-specific anxiety. The overall conceptualization for investigating this interaction is that individuals who perceive their climate as unsupportive and negative and also experience more symptoms of anxiety will be less likely to intervene during bullying scenarios. Additionally, it was the goal of this study to determine if likeliness to experience symptoms of anxiety impacts the known association between school climate and bystander behaviors.
Research Question One sought to investigate if there were any unique contributions to bystander behavior from differing forms of anxiety. Whereas social anxiety tends to be focused more on social-evaluative information, generalized anxiety is free-floating across settings. As such, there was a proposed hypothesis in this study that social anxiety would contribute a comparatively large explanation for bystander behaviors. The act of defending is nuanced, and complex, as it would involve putting oneself at-risk, physically or sociometrically.
The rationale for investigating two types of anxiety forms within a non-clinical sample is as follows: In one empirical study of paranoia within a non-clinical college student population, researchers found that ideation which resembled paranoia (e.g., “I have often felt that strangers are looking at me critically”) was associated with more symptoms of anxiety and greater sensitivity to and likeliness to alter observable aspects of oneself (Martin & Penn,
2001.) Thus, there is suggestion that subclinical tendencies or proneness to worry may create behavioral vigilance.
Casey et al. (2016) wrote that participants endorsed the significance of analyzing the social costs and benefits to defending a victim of bullying in their study of bystander behaviors among adolescents. Such cognitive processes have long-been studied in the context of group
76 dynamics, often termed “subjective probability of success” or “assessment of gains and costs”
(Cartwright & Zander, 1968). In this process of cost-gains analysis, it is likely that those with greater activation of stress and greater threat perception would be more likely to avoid the potentially confrontational interaction of direct intervention.
Given the aforementioned discussion on proneness to anxiety being a plausible explanation for behavioral inhibition (i.e., passive outsider behavior during bullying), the current study also sought to determine if there is any differential predictive ability in proneness to type of anxious feelings. The current student hypothesized that social anxiety would show greater predictive ability in bystander behaviors during bullying than generalized anxiety on the rationale that the social nature of bullying occurrences would draw more from proneness to fear of negative social evaluation. In the current study, the incremental utility of social anxiety was not found. Neither social anxiety nor generalized anxiety was significant in predicting defending behaviors during bullying, and in these analyses, only generalized appeared significantly and positively associated with Outsider Behavior. In later analyses, generalized anxiety appeared not as strong of a predictor as perceptions of school climate. Additionally,
Social Anxiety showed a significant inverse association with defender behaviors in research questions two through four. Thus, these variables interact differently with other, stronger variables and overall do not appear to be strong, isolated predictors in explaining bystander behavior during bullying in isolation.
Hypotheses One and Two were not confirmed in these analyses, suggesting that social anxiety does not have incremental predictive utility in explaining outsider and defender behaviors, above and beyond generalized anxiety. The intercorrelation between these two variables was measured at .67, indicating a significant degree of overlap. It is possible that the
77 convergent nature of these two variables limited their use in analyses as standalone predictors.
Furthermore, these analyses showed that measurement of anxiety may have a unique association with Outsider Behavior but may serve as weak predictors in isolation when examining Defender Behavior. Despite being fundamentally different measured constructs among clinical samples, the commonalities of social anxiety and generalized anxiety in the current study appeared to supersede any significant difference. In the experience of social- specific anxiety and general anxiety, past-oriented ruminations and a prevention focus draw attentional resources and constrict cognitive capacities (Hoge et al., 2015; Kashdan, Elhai, &
Breen, 2008). Thus, despite the fact that these two forms of anxiety are conceptually different, their separate utility within a large, non-clinical sample may be limited.
Passive outsider behavior may be better explained by proneness to anxiety than variations in defending behavior, according to the current study. Whereas defender and outsider behavior may sometimes be thought of as opposite ends of a behavioral continuum, these results suggest that they are organically different experiences. The wording of scale items assessing outsider behaviors in the current study were frequently worded as “I ignored it when…” and “I pretended not to…” suggesting that one who answers in an affirmative way would demonstrate recognition that a negative event is happening but still remains passive.
Research has detailed that the experience of anxious feelings, particularly when experienced frequently and chronically, results in a mixture of approach and avoidance motivations
(Kashdan et al., 2008). It is possible that the tension one experiences when viewing bullying behaviors furthers predisposed feelings of distress and tension. This association may further discussions within the current literature base which frames witnessing bullying behaviors as a form of interpersonal trauma.
78 Research question two examined if generalized and social anxiety moderated the associations between perceived school climate and bystander behaviors during bullying. In the regression models examined, only partial evidence for this association was found. Hypotheses three and four proposed that proneness to anxiety would interact with perceived school climate, such that individuals with more negatively perceived climate would experience effects of anxiety more significantly to increase outsider behaviors and reduce defending. Social anxiety moderated the association between perceptions of school climate and outsider behavior, such that individuals with the highest reported social anxiety and negative perceptions of school climate were most likely to demonstrate passive outsider behaviors. Moreover, as will be discussed, this association was also moderated by gender.
It is possible that minimal evidence for research question two was found due to the non- clinical sample utilized in the current study. It is possible that an experimental study which examined individuals with clinically recognized anxiety compared to healthy controls may result in greater effects. Additionally, it is possible that anxious feelings operate independent of perceived school climate to contextually affect bystander behavior during bullying. That is, the experience of anxiety may influence bystander behavior regardless of whether school climate is perceived as safe and inclusive or not. For example, one’s experience in viewing bullying behavior may vary significantly situationally. Whereas one’s predisposed anxiousness may be more evoked during more significant imminent threats, one’s predisposed anxiousness may be less activated during more mild or ambiguous scenarios. These effects may operate outside of one’s beliefs and perceptions of their school climate.
Research question three examined if gender moderated the association between perceptions of school climate, anxiety, and bystander behaviors during bullying. This research
79 question built on research question two and further explained the association between social anxiety, perceived school climate, and passive outsider behavior. This finding may indicate that gender interacts uniquely with perceptions of climate and proneness to anxiety.
Visual inspection of the interaction graphs showed steepest slope for male-identifying participants with lower reported social anxiety. In contrast, it was found that there was no interaction effect for male-identifying participants with higher reported social anxiety. That is, school climate perceived as more positive reduced outsider behavior among all sample populations except male participants with higher reported social anxiety.
Gender was inversely associated with defender behavior, meaning that defending behavior was less prevalent among female participants. Research using animal models have suggested that the corticosteroid response to stress is stronger among females than males, making them more likely to behave passively and become helpless (Leussis & Anderson,
2008.) Thus, it may be possible that adolescent males who are already comparatively more prone to social approach during pubertal development may be more likely to defend a victim of bullying. The current study also showed the opposite phenomenon. As this interaction effect from research question three showed, males who are sensitized to social distress through reported social anxiety were seemingly less likely to be susceptible to the buffering effects of positive school climate to lessen passive outsider behavior.
Empirical work has shown that the development of impulse control is slower among males than females in adolescence (Shulman, Harden, Chein, & Steinberg, 2015) and approach behavior is lowest among anxiety-prone individuals when exclusion is detected (Gazelle &
Rudolph, 2004). As such, it is possible that males may be more propelled toward social risk
(defending) than their female counterparts. Whereas female adolescents are more likely to
80 experience rumination alongside internalizing distress which inhibits actions, male adolescents undergo a unique neurological experience of enhanced neural pruning surrounding approach- related brain areas (Anderson & Teicher, 2008). That is, adolescent males experience a rapid neurological shift in pubertal development which could result in greater disregard to personal safety and self-preservation. However, in this study, males who reported higher social anxiety were resistant to the predictive utility of school climate to explain outsider behavior. Their level of reported outsider behavior remained steady, no matter the perceived climate. As such, males with higher proneness to social anxiety may be particularly crippled and unable to utilize the social-cognitive and contextual boost that other peers may benefit from when climate is perceived a supportive and inclusive. Despite a more positive climate, males with higher proneness to social internalizing distress may feel more isolated, and unable to act within bullying scenarios to assist another for fear of rejection. While adolescent boys are typically thought of as more likely to use approach-oriented, even aggressive behaviors during threatening scenarios (Siegel, La Greca, & Harrison, 2009), this study showed that they may be more likely to utilize passive, avoidant behavior when proneness to social anxiety is higher.
Research Question Four examined if Victimization moderates the association of
Perceptions of School Climate and Generalized Anxiety and Social Anxiety with Defender and
Outsider Behaviors. Although the proposed three-way interaction was not confirmed, one interaction was found which indicated that individuals who experienced higher amounts of victimization reported higher rates of defending behaviors. This finding presents a unique replication of existing literature which suggests that individuals who have experienced victimization may on occasion be more likely to come to the aid of another victim, particularly when the person perpetrating the bullying is shared (Huitsing & Veenstra, 2012).
81 Analyses of slopes for research question four indicated that individuals with higher experiences with victimization remained highest in reported defending behavior, no matter the reported quality of school climate. This finding furthers a “victim advocacy” perspective that could develop amongst peer groups, in which peers who experience negative bullying events may actually become empowered to defend others who experience victimization. As was found within the study by Huitsing and Veenstra (2012), it appears that peer coalitions may start to develop among school populations and adolescents find strength in numbers to defend once they view someone else undergoing a similar experience. Importantly, the interaction effect showed that a positively perceived school climate narrowed the gap between defending behaviors among those who had experienced higher and lower amounts of victimization, suggesting that a positive school climate encourages even those who haven’t experienced as much personal experience with victimization to still take initiative to defend victims of bullying more than their counterparts who perceive the climate as unsupportive.
Recent work has expanded the view on mental health effects of bystanding during bullying and has conceptualized viewing frequent victimization as a potential form of interpersonal trauma. D’Andrea, Ford, Stolbach, Spinazzola, and van der Kolk (2012) discussed that individuals who experience victimization may experience symptoms that approximate that of post-traumatic stress disorder, but are often conceptualized under differing comorbidities, such as anxiety and depressive disorders. Authors in this publication argue that chronic exposure to bullying behaviors can precipitate a variety of symptoms, but intervention for these symptoms may be shortsighted without considering the whole picture of the individual’s experience, which includes prior experience with victimization. In the current study, there were no numerous interactions that appeared among anxiety variables,
82 victimization, and the measured bullying behaviors. However, this association may become apparent if examining adjustment variables as outcomes.
Research question five examined the moderating ability of observed defending behaviors on the association between school climate and defender behaviors during bullying.
Although school climate and observed defending behaviors were both significantly associated with defender behaviors, there was no significant interaction term when examined in a regression model. The hypothesis associated with research question five proposed that observed defending behaviors among peers could serve as a model for participants to demonstrate defending behaviors.
Observed defending behavior was positively associated with defender behavior during bullying. In Step One of the regression analysis which examined observed defending, the association between observed defending and defender behavior was significant. Social
Learning Theory (Bandura, 1978) posits that individuals use environmental cues and observations of others to form drives or inhibitions for their own behaviors. Whereas an observed outcome of an event that is positive may drive one toward a certain behavior, an observed outcome that negative may make it less likely that one may demonstrate a behavior.
The current study hypothesized that observing defending among peers would not only increase self-reported defending behaviors but would also enhance the impact of a positive climate.
Whereas a positively perceived school climate may create the expectation to help others, actually seeing it from same-aged models was proposed to heighten likeliness of actual defending.
In a review of cross-cultural perspectives on bullying behaviors, Monk et al. (2006) stated that bullying itself must be something that is embedded in the organizational structure to
83 exist. It must be permitted and reinforced in order to be something that is adaptive and functional. Defending behaviors that are observable are incompatible with bullying behaviors given that they take away the reward from bullying behavior. In the current study, observed defending behavior was in fact a significant predictor in amount of reported defending behavior, suggesting that observing others defend may serve as a learning opportunity.
The current study was a cross-sectional survey design. As such, any inferences about directionality for what causes one to demonstrate defending or passive bystander behaviors is limited. Furthermore, this study was taken from a sample which could possibly be labeled as relatively prosocial. Outsider behaviors were on average demonstrated about “1 or 2 times” within the last 30 days and defender behaviors were on average demonstrated about “1 or 2 times” within the last 30 days, indicating a possibly infrequent occurrence of bullying scenarios. In future research using a concurrent design, it would be beneficial to account for frequency of reported bullying scenarios to remove this as a potential confound.
Additionally, future research would benefit from more fluid analysis of bullying behaviors. It is potentially the case that one given participant demonstrated an equal amount of outsider behaviors, defender behaviors, and bullying perpetration, all within the last 30 days, potentially making the strongest predictor the context of the group and the rationale for action
(i.e., a friend was being bullied or one had the opportunity to look good in front of another group of peers by victimizing another.) Sociometric reporting or social network analysis could provide more accurate depictions of bullying behaviors or at least provide more explanatory control variables.
One limitation in the current research design was demonstrated by the inverse association shown between the variables of Perceptions of School Climate and Defending
84 Behavior. Whereas it would be predicted that a positively perceived school climate would enable one to defend, in this sample, it was indicated that there is less defending behavior when climate is perceived more positively. One possible interpretation of this is that those who perceive a more positive climate may view less bullying behaviors overall and thus are less likely to have opportunities to defend a victim of bullying. One additional measurement limitation was the use of a one-time question to assess frequency of observed defending behavior. Although evidence was cited for the use of a one-item measure, it is difficult to fully determine the reliability and validity of such a measurement. Additionally, the one-question format was inconsistent from the remainder of the measures.
In regards to the one-question item utilized to assess observed bystander behavior, there is potential for criticism of the item’s non-specificity. Specifically, the item does not specify the format of defending behavior that may be observed by respondents. Additionally, the wording of the item, which appears as, “How often do other students try to put a stop to it when a student is being bullied at school?” may allow a respondent to view the question from a limited scope of defending behaviors. For example, respondents may view this item as only asking about intrusive, observable intervention, rather than intervention which may be in response to more muted forms of bullying, such as relational aggression. As within the discussion above on school climate and defending behavior, this item is also limited by the extent that students are exposed to bullying behaviors. A low level of exposure to bullying behaviors would also reduce the likeliness of observing defending. Future studies would benefit from examination of this measure with specificity as to the type of defending observed.
There was only occasional utility for interpretation of generalized anxiety and social anxiety as separate moderators. First, there was not difference in power of predictive ability
85 when examining defender and outsider behaviors. Additionally, few of the proposed higher- order associations were differentiated by anxiety form. In one case, the association between social anxiety, perceptions of school climate, and outsider behaviors was moderated by gender.
However, there is only small pieces of evidence to confirm the argument that these two variables can be reliably measured within a non-clinical sample.
Measurement of anxiety within a non-clinical sample was done within the framework of anxiety sensitivity, likely as a trait variable. Items used within this sample to investigate anxiety were taken from an anxiety screener. In future work, large sample sizes may be obtained and hard cutoffs might be utilized in order to only examine associations between variables among those who meet the threshold for likeliness of actually meeting criteria for an anxiety disorder.
Lastly, the current study consolidated multiple components of a school climate measure into a summed total school climate score. Rather than examining a school climate measure with multiple dimensions in separate analyses, the school climate examination utilized one unitary measure. Whereas examination of school climate in a multiple-factor structure has been established within the literature (Zullig, Koopman, Patton, & Ubbes, 2010), there is also empirical evidence to view school climate as a summative measure. As mentioned within the literature review, this perspective is supported by literature which describes school climate as the summation of multiple factors (Wang & Degol, 2016). As such, the current study examined school climate as a summed score, despite the validity of utilization of multiple subscores. It is possible that aspects of school climate, such as safety, incivility, or belongingness, may show differentiated associated with aspects of bystander behavior during bullying scenarios. Future
86 studies would benefit from continued examination of the multidimensionality of school climate in its associated with bullying behaviors.
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APPENDICES APPENDIX A
SCREEN FOR ANXIETY-RELATED DISORDERS (SCARED) GENERALIZED
ANXIETY SUBSCALE
106 SCARED: Generalized Anxiety
Directions: Below is a list of sentences that describe how people feel. Read each phrase and describe which option best describes you.
I worry about other people liking me.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I am nervous.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I worry about being as good as other kids.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I worry about things working out for me.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I worry about things that have already happened.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I am a worrier.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
107 People tell me I worry too much.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I worry about what is going to happen in the future.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I worry about how well I do things.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
APPENDIX B
SCREEN FOR ANXIETY-RELATED DISORDERS (SCARED) SOCIAL ANXIETY
SUBSCALE
109 SCARED: Social Anxiety
Directions: Below is a list of sentences that describe how people feel. Read each phrase and describe which option best describes you.
I don’t like to be with people I don’t know well.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I feel nervous with people I don’t know well.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
It is hard to talk with people I don’t know well.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I feel shy with people I don’t know well.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I feel nervous when I am going to parties, dances, or any place where there will be people that I don’t know well.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
I feel nervous when I am with children or adults and I have to do something while they watch me (i.e. read aloud, speak, play a game or sport).
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
110 I am shy.
1 2 3 Not True or Hardly Every Somewhat True or Very Often or Often True True Sometimes True
APPENDIX C
SAFE AND RESPONSIVE SCHOOLS SAFE SCHOOLS SURVEY (SRS)
112 SRS: School Climate Survey
Personal Safety
I feel safe before & after school while on school grounds.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I feel safe in the lunchroom.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I feel safe going to & coming from school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I feel safe in my classrooms.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Overall, I feel that this school is a safe school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I feel safe in the bathrooms at this school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I feel safe in the school hallways.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
113
Belongingness
I feel that I can talk to a teacher or an administrator if I have a problem.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Teachers & staff accept me for who I am.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Teachers listen carefully to what I have to say.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I feel comfortable telling a teacher or an administrator about potential violence.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I feel that the teachers care about me as a person.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I feel that I belong to this school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
114 Climate/Connectedness
I feel that teachers care about my learning.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Teachers praise students when they have done well.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Most students are proud of this school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Teachers & administrators supervise the halls during passing time.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I am proud of this school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
School rules are clearly defined & explained so that I can understand them.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
School rules seem reasonable.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
115 Teachers work hard to make every student successful.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I feel welcome when I am at school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Teachers enjoy teaching here.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I am generally treated fairly at this school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Students enjoy learning here.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Experience
I am learning a lot at this school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I am getting a good education at this school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
116 Major Safety
I have seen a student with a gun at school this year.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Physical fighting or conflicts happen regularly at school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Robbery or theft of school property over $10 in value is common.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I have seen a student with a knife at school this year (not including a cafeteria knife).
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Drug Use
I have seen students smoking at school or on school grounds.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
I have seen students with drugs or alcohol at school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Students use alcohol or drugs at school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
117
Sale of drugs occurs on school grounds.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Students use drugs or alcohol outside of school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Incivility
Students cut classes or are absent regularly.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Threats by one student against another are common at school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Some students are regularly hassled by other students.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Name calling, insults, or teasing happen regularly at school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Groups of students cause problems or conflicts at school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
118 Arguments among students are common at school.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
Students regularly cheat on tests or assignments.
1 2 3 4 5 Strongly Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree Disagree
APPENDIX D
BULLYING PARTICIPANT BEHAVIOR QUESTIONNAIRE (BPBQ) VICTIM SUBSCALE
120 DIRECTIONS: Has any of the following happened to you in the past 30 days? If so, how often?
I have been called mean names.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I have been made fun of.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I have been purposely left out of something.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I have been ignored.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I have been pushed around, punched, or slapped.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I have been pushed or shoved.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
People have told lies about me.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
People have tried to make others dislike me.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
121 I have been threatened by others.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I have had things taken from me.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
APPENDIX E
BULLYING PARTICIPANT BEHAVIOR QUESTIONNAIRE (BPBQ) DEFENDER
SUBSCALE
123
DIRECTIONS: Has any of the following happened to you in the past 30 days? If so, how often?
I tried to become friends with someone after they were picked on.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I encouraged someone to tell an adult after they were picked on.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I defended someone who was being pushed, punched, or slapped.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I defended someone who had things purposely taken from them.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I defended someone who was being called mean names.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I tried to include someone if they were being purposely left out.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I helped someone who had their books knocked out of their hands on purpose.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I helped someone who was purposely tripped.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
124 When I saw someone being physically harmed, I told an adult.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I defended someone who I thought was being tricked on purpose.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
APPENDIX F
BULLYING PARTICIPANT BEHAVIOR QUESTIONNAIRE (BPBQ) OUTSIDER
SUBSCALE
126 DIRECTIONS: Has any of the following happened to you in the past 30 days? If so, how often?
I pretended not to notice when things were taken or stolen from another student.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I pretended not to notice when rumors were being spread about other students.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I ignored it when I saw someone making fun of another student.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I pretended not to notice a situation that purposely left someone out.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I ignored it when I saw someone breaking or damaging another student's things.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I pretended not to notice when someone else tripped another student on purpose.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I ignored it when someone else pinched or poked another student.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I ignored it when someone else threw something at another student.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
127 I ignored it when someone else tricked another student.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times
I pretended not to notice when someone was destroying another student's property.
1 2 3 4 5 Never 1-2 times 3-4 times 5-6 times 7 or more times