Proposing and testing the pathways from bullying victimization to bringing a weapon to school.

OBJECTIVE: The current study examined whether bullying victimization was associated with bringing a weapon to school, fully or partly mediated by feeling unsafe in school, negative future education orientation, and skipping school. METHOD: Data from 6199 students (12-18 years old), who had filled out the 2017 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, were analyzed. RESULTS: The results showed a positive association between bullying victimization and bringing a weapon to school. The link was both direct and indirect through the mediating roles of feeling unsafe in school, having a negative future education orientation, and skipping school. CONCLUSION: Thus, victims of bullying tended to feel unsafe in school, have a negative future education orientation, and skip school-all of which were positively associated with bringing a weapon to school.

Receiving a gift and feeling robbed: a phenomenological study on parents' experiences of Brief Admissions for teenagers who self-harm at risk for suicide.

BACKGROUND: Brief Admission by self-referral is a preventive intervention here intended for individuals who recurrently self-harm and have a history of contact with emergency psychiatric services. Individuals with access to Brief Admission are empowered to self-admit to inpatient care for up to three days per stay and are encouraged to do so before experiencing crisis. Brief Admission was implemented relatively recently in child and adolescent psychiatric settings in Sweden. The purpose of this study was to phenomenologically explore the lived experience of parents whose teenagers, who recurrently self-harm and experience suicidal thoughts, use Brief Admissions. METHODS: This is a qualitative study using phenomenological psychological analysis. We interviewed 17 parents who had experienced their teenagers using Brief Admissions. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim and analyzed to arrive at the essential meaning structure of the phenomenon of Brief Admissions for the parent. RESULTS: We identified two essential meaning structures of the parent's experience of their teenager's use of Brief Admissions: being gifted relief and hope or being robbed of everything you believed in. The experience of Brief Admissions as a gift was structured by the following constituents: 'a sense of safety and containment', 'liberation from a hostage situation', 'a return to wellbeing', and 'catalysts for relational shifts'. In contrast, the constituents of the experience of being robbed included 'a tug of war for control', 'an unworthy wasteland', 'abandonment and collapse of authority', and 'no sense of purpose and plan'. CONCLUSIONS: Brief Admissions may come across as challenging, futile and painful in the life of the parent, yet they may also support a process of recovery and healthy development for the entire family. To realize the full potential of the intervention, mental health professionals providing Brief Admission must be mindful of the challenges the parent may face as their teenager starts self-admitting, tactfully and sensitively preparing the parent for a new parental role.

Friendship habits questionnaire: A measure of group- versus dyadic-oriented socializing styles.

Friendships are central to our social lives, yet little is known about individual differences associated with the number of friends people enjoy spending time with. Here we present the Friendship Habits Questionnaire (FHQ), a new scale of group versus dyadic-oriented friendship styles. Three studies investigated the psychometric properties of group-oriented friendships and the relevant individual differences. The initially developed questionnaire measured individual differences in extraversion as well as desire for intimacy, competitiveness, and group identification, traits that previous research links with socializing in groups versus one-to-one friendships. In three validation studies involving more than 800 participants (353 men, age M = 25.76) and using principal and confirmatory factor analyses, we found that the structure of the FHQ is best described with four dimensions: extraversion, intimacy, positive group identification, and negative group identification. Therefore, competitiveness was dropped from the final version of the FHQ. Moreover, FHQ scores reliably predicted the size of friendship groups in which people enjoy socializing, suggesting good construct validity. Together, our results document individual differences in pursuing group versus dyadic-oriented friendships and provide a new tool for measuring such differences.

Investigating the effects of autonomy-supportive parenting practices on Italian young adolescent students' motivation to defend victims of bullying: findings on the mediating roles of reactance, depression, anxiety, and stress.

This study investigated the effect of autonomy-supportive parenting practices on young adolescents' self-reported motivation to defend victims of bullying, and the possible mediating effects of factors such as reactance, anxiety, depression, and stress. Methods: Data were collected from 578 Italian public school students ages 10-14 (M age = 11.8 years, 52% boys), who completed a survey in their classroom. The survey included self-report measures of parental orientation, motivation to defend victims of bullying, reactance, anxiety, depression, and stress. Results: We found that autonomy-supportive parenting had a positive effect on autonomous motivation to defend, and that this effect was weakly mediated by reactance. Moreover, autonomy-supportive parenting had a negative effect on extrinsic motivation to defend, which was partially mediated by reactance. Reactance had a positive direct effect on extrinsic motivation to defend, but results also showed that anxiety, depression, and stress did not mediate the effect of autonomy-supportive parenting on motivation to defend. Additionally, autonomy-supportive parenting appeared to play a protective role, being associated with lower levels of reactance, anxiety, depression, and stress. Finally, gender differences were found in our sample, with extrinsic motivation to defend being more prevalent in boys, and autonomous motivation to defend being more prevalent in girls. Girls also reported higher levels of anxiety, depression, and stress, compared to boys. Conclusion: Our findings show that autonomy-supportive parenting practices play a significant role in fostering young adolescents' motivation to defend victims of bullying, and that they are also linked with lower feelings of reactance, anxiety, depression, and stress. We argue that interventions aimed at contrasting bullying and cyberbullying among youths should seek to involve parents more and promote the adoption of more autonomy-supportive parenting practices, due to their consistently proven beneficial effects.

Early Adolescents' Motivations to Defend Victims of Cyberbullying.

The aim of this study was to investigate how different types of motivation to defend victims of bullying would be associated with various bystander behaviors in cyberbullying situations among early adolescents in Sweden. Data were collected from 460 Swedish adolescents aged between 11 and 15 years who completed a survey in their classroom. Results showed that autonomous motivation to defend was positively associated with defender behavior and negatively associated with pro-bully and passive behavior, while extrinsic motivation was positively associated with pro-bully and passive behavior. Age was positively associated with increased passive behavior and dampened defensive behavior, while no effect of gender was found on defender behavior. Our findings suggest that students' autonomous motivation to defend victims is important in cyberbullying situations.

A work motivational grounded theory study of workers in caring roles.

The aim of this study was to examine and construct a theoretical model of key elements that care workers perceive to have an impact on their autonomy, cohesion, and work motivation. Grounded theory was used for data collection and analysis. There were 20 participants from social welfare service, geriatric care, and women's aid settings (women = 18, men = 2, mean age = 37.6). The analysis resulted in the following categories: (a) Being-a-Cohesive-Team; (b) Agency-Making; (c) Living-Up-to-Expectations; and (d) Developing-Support-and-Feedback. The results identified potential interactions between these factors and suggested how they influenced each other, showing how cohesion, autonomy, and motivation are interdependent and amplified.

Profiles of bystanders' motivation to defend school bully victims from a self-determination perspective.

This study was aimed at exploring which latent profiles emerge based on ratings of self-determined motivation to defend victims of bullying, and to explore if they are related to bystander roles and victimization in bullying, as well as student-teacher relations. Data were collected from 1,800 Swedish and Italian students, with an age range between 10 and 18 years (M = 12.6, standard deviation = 1.74). The students completed a survey in their classrooms. Latent profile analysis was used to explore the possible clusters of individuals with similar ratings on the motivational variables. Multivariate analysis of variances were conducted to explore differences between the profiles in relation to their roles when witnessing bullying and to student-teacher relationships. Four latent profiles emerged. The profiles represented respondents (a) high in prosocial motivation, (b) high in externally extrinsic motivation, (c) intermediate in externally extrinsic motivation, and (d) with identified/introjected motivation. Multivariate analyses showed that reports of bystander roles when witnessing bullying, teacher-student relationships, and bullying victimization, significantly differed over the motivational profiles. The bystanders were unevenly distributed across the four groups and most individuals were categorized in the prosocial motivation group. Female and male bystanders were evenly distributed across clusters. The prosocial motivation group experienced victimization to a lesser extent than the other profile groups. Students in the intermediate externally extrinsic group were more likely to take the pro-bully and outsider role during bullying. Concerning student-teacher relationships, the prosocial motivation group reported the closest relationships with their teachers, while the intermediate externally extrinsic group reported the most conflictual relationships.

Cyberbullying and cybervictimization among preadolescents: Does time perspective matter?

Time perspective has been recognized as an important psychological dimension with a pervasive and powerful influence on human behavior. To the authors' knowledge, no studies have focused on the relationship between time perspective and cyberbullying behavior. The first aim of this research is to fill this gap by investigating the relationship between different time perspectives and both cyberbullying and cybervictimization among 6th to 8th grade students. The second objective was to investigate the relationship between time perspective, cyberbullying behaviors, peer problems, and the quality of relationship with teachers. A sample consisting of 403 students aged between 11 and 14 years from Italian middle schools (56% females, mean age = 12.2 years) were recruited. Participants filled in a self-report questionnaire measuring cyberbullying and cybervictimization as well as the Time Perspective questionnaire. The analyses showed the presence of significant correlations between time perspective and both cyberbullying and cybervictimization. In particular, cybervictimization showed a quite large positive correlation with a past-negative orientation and a negative correlation with past-positive orientation. Instead, the involvement in active cyberbullying was positively correlated with a past-negative orientation and negatively correlated with future orientation. The findings advance the understanding of psychological factors influencing cyberbullying during early adolescence and suggest the importance of past-positive and past-negative orientations in accounting for both active cyberbullying and cybervictimization. As expected, future orientation appeared to represent a protective factor against involvement in cyberbullying behaviors.

Revising the Self-Harm Antipathy Scale: validation among staff in psychiatric healthcare in Sweden.

Background: The Self-Harm Antipathy Scale (SHAS) is a questionnaire designed to measure nurses' attitudes towards self-harm. This can be useful to improve the quality of care provided to individuals who self-harm.Aim: The purpose of this study was to revise and adapt the SHAS for use in Sweden and evaluate the psychometric properties of this Swedish version (Self-Harm Antipathy Scale - Swedish Revised; SHAS-SR).Methods: A sample of 596 employees within psychiatric healthcare was recruited (from a total of 3507, response rate 17.0%), the majority encountering self-harming individuals regularly at work. Participants completed the SHAS-SR questionnaire along with a scale assessing community attitudes towards individuals with mental illness (New CAMI-S). The sample was randomly split in half (n = 298 each). Exploratory factor analysis was performed on one subsample and confirmatory on the other. Confirmatory factor analysis on the original SHAS model, and convergent validity testing against New CAMI-S, used the whole sample.Results: The final version of the SHAS-SR included 17 items forming three factors. Convergent validity was established (r = -0.57, ρ = -0.48, p < 0.001). The SHAS-SR and all its subscales demonstrated acceptable internal consistency (α = 0.73-0.79, ω = 0.78-0.79).Conclusion: This study indicates that the SHAS-SR is reliable and valid when assessing attitudes towards self-harm among a sample of Swedish psychiatric healthcare staff. The scale could be useful for assessing the impact of attitude interventions to improve healthcare services. It may, however, have limited applicability for staff not working in caring roles.

Direct Bullying and Cyberbullying: Experimental Study of Bystanders' Motivation to Defend Victims and the Role of Anxiety and Identification With the Bully.

School bullying among young adolescents is a globally pervasive problem, but is less common when bystanders are motivated to defend victims. Thus, the focus of this experimental study is on motivation to defend victims of bullying. Methods: A total of 388 students (M age = 12.22 years, 49.7% girls) from two Turkish public schools (5th-8th grade) participated in a vignette experiment. Students were randomized to one of two vignettes (direct vs. cyberbullying). Self-report measures of motivation to defend, trait anxiety, depression, and identification with the victim or bully were used. Results: Participants reported more autonomous motivation in the cyberbullying condition, while those who witnessed direct bullying reported higher anxiety and depression. Results also revealed that this type of condition was associated with anxiety and depression, while anxiety was associated with autonomous motivation to defend. Finally, participants in the direct bullying condition were more likely to identify with the bully. Conclusion: Findings advance our understanding of when and why adolescents are motivated to help victims of bullying because they give a richer picture of what they assess when deciding whether or not they should intervene.

Bullying bystander behaviors: The role of coping effectiveness and the moderating effect of gender.

Researchers have suggested that bystander behaviors and victim coping play an important role in counteracting the negative effects of bullying. The current study investigated the relationship between students' ratings of coping effectiveness when addressing bullying and their behaviors as bystanders when witnessing bullying. Surveys were administered in a Midwestern, suburban school district. Some associations between perceptions of coping effectiveness and bystander behavior supported our hypotheses (e.g., constructive coping associated with defending bystander behaviors, externalizing associated with pro-bullying behaviors). However, some findings did not support hypothesized relationships. For example, higher ratings of effectiveness for cognitive distancing as a coping strategy were associated with increased defending behaviors as a bystander. Gender moderated some of these relationships. Pro-bullying bystander behavior was associated with increased ratings of cognitive distancing and decreased reports of constructive coping effectiveness for girls. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Trait anxiety and bystander motivation to defend victims of school bullying.

INTRODUCTION: School-based bullying is an omnipresent problem, but is less frequent when bystanders are inclined to defend victims. This makes it important to focus on motivation to intervene in bullying. METHODS: 202 students (Mage = 16.44 years, 52% boys) from public Swedish high schools participated in a vignette experiment. Students were randomized to one of two vignettes (victim belonging to/not belonging to ingroup). Self-report measures of motivation to defend and trait anxiety were used. RESULTS: Participants reported more autonomous motivation when the victim belonged to the ingroup and more extrinsic motivation when the victim did not belong to the ingroup. Trait anxiety interacted with the manipulation: bystanders high in anxiety reported low levels of autonomous motivation when the victim did not belong to the ingroup and low levels of extrinsic motivation when the victim belonged to the ingroup. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that anti-bullying-programs should focus on how defender motivation is influenced by the way in which victim ingroup status is perceived and address the bystander's level of anxiety as this interacts with such perceptions.

Callous-Unemotional Traits, Harm-Effect Moral Reasoning, and Bullying Among Swedish Children.

BACKGROUND: Although callous-unemotional (CU) traits have been associated with bullying among children and adolescents, relatively little is known about whether each of the three sub-constructs of CU traits-callous, uncaring, and unemotional-are associated with bullying when they are considered concurrently in the analysis. OBJECTIVE: This study was the first to examine in a single model whether callous, uncaring, and unemotional traits are directly related to the perpetration of bullying and to harm-effect moral reasoning in bullying among children as well as whether these three CU traits are indirectly related to bullying mediated by harm-effect moral reasoning. METHODS: Self-reported data on CU traits, harm-effect moral reasoning in bullying situations, and bullying perpetration were collected from 381 children from 13 schools in Sweden. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses. RESULTS: When all three sub-constructs of CU traits were included in a single model, greater callousness and uncaring were directly associated with greater bullying. In contrast, greater harm-effect moral reasoning was associated with less bullying. Moreover, greater callousness and unemotional were indirectly associated with greater bullying through the reduced use of harm-effect moral reasoning. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings demonstrate that all three CU traits are important to address, although their associations with bullying took some different paths, and that callousness appears to be the most important CU trait in relation to bullying.

Early adolescents' motivations to defend victims in school bullying and their perceptions of student-teacher relationships: A self-determination theory approach.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether various dimensions of student-teacher relationships were associated with different types of motivation to defend victims in bullying and to determine the association between these types of motivations and various bystander behaviors in bullying situations among early adolescents in Italy. Data were collected from 405 Italian adolescents who completed a survey in their classroom. Results showed that warm student-teacher relationships were positively associated with defending victims and with autonomous motivation to defend victims. In contrast, conflictual student-teacher relationships were positively associated with passive bystanding and with extrinsic motivation to defend victims. Different forms of motivation to defend were found to be mediators between student-teacher relationship qualities and bystander behaviors in school bullying. Our findings suggest that teachers should build warm and caring student-teacher relationships to enhance students' autonomous motivation to defend victims of bullying as well as their inclination to defend the victims in practice.

Contrasting two models of academic self-efficacy--domain-specific versus cross-domain--in children receiving and not receiving special instruction in mathematics.

In social cognitive theory, self-efficacy is domain-specific. An alternative model, the cross-domain influence model, would predict that self-efficacy beliefs in one domain might influence performance in other domains. Research has also found that children who receive special instruction are not good at estimating their performance. The aim was to test two models of how self-efficacy beliefs influence achievement, and to contrast children receiving special instruction in mathematics with normally-achieving children. The participants were 73 fifth-grade children who receive special instruction and 70 children who do not receive any special instruction. In year four and five, the children's skills in mathematics and reading were assessed by national curriculum tests, and in their fifth year, self-efficacy in mathematics and reading were measured. Structural equation modeling showed that in domains where children do not receive special instruction in mathematics, self-efficacy is a mediating variable between earlier and later achievement in the same domain. Achievement in mathematics was not mediated by self-efficacy in mathematics for children who receive special instruction. For normal achieving children, earlier achievement in the language domain had an influence on later self-efficacy in the mathematics domain, and self-efficacy beliefs in different domains were correlated. Self-efficacy is mostly domain specific, but may play a different role in academic performance depending on whether children receive special instruction. The results of the present study provided some support of the Cross-Domain Influence Model for normal achieving children.

School bullying and the mechanisms of moral disengagement.

The aim of the present study was to examine to what degree different mechanisms of moral disengagement were related to age, gender, bullying, and defending among school children. Three hundred and seventy-two Swedish children ranging in age from 10 to 14 years completed a questionnaire. Findings revealed that boys expressed significantly higher levels of moral justification, euphemistic labeling, diffusion of responsibility, distorting consequences, and victim attribution, as compared with girls. Whereas boys bullied others significantly more often than girls, age was unrelated to bullying. Moral justification and victim attribution were the only dimensions of moral disengagement that significantly related to bullying. Furthermore, younger children and girls were more likely to defend victims. Diffusion of responsibility and victim attribution were significantly and negatively related to defending, while the other dimensions of moral disengagement were unrelated to defending.

Distinguishing source of autonomy support in relation to workers' motivation and self-efficacy.

The purpose was to investigate the relationship between autonomy support by managers and co-workers and employees' work motivation and self-efficacy in two studies. In Study 1, a sample of 343 Swedish workers completed surveys, and in Study 2, we followed up with a subsample of 98 workers one year later. As in previous studies, managers support of autonomy was significantly positively related to workers' outcomes. However, the results of Study 1 also showed that co-worker autonomy support was related to these outcomes over and above the effects of manager support. Study 2 showed that changes in autonomy support from co-workers during one year significantly predicted motivation and self-efficacy one year later, while change in support from managers was unrelated to outcomes later. These findings provide evidence for the importance of both vertical and horizontal sources of support.

Bystander behavior in bullying situations: basic moral sensitivity, moral disengagement and defender self-efficacy.

The aim of the present study was to investigate how basic moral sensitivity in bullying, moral disengagement in bullying and defender self-efficacy were related to different bystander behaviors in bullying. Therefore, we examined pathways that linked students' basic moral sensitivity, moral disengagement, and defender self-efficacy to different bystander behaviors in bullying situations. Three hundred and forty-seven teenagers completed a bullying survey. Findings indicated that compared with boys, girls expressed higher basic moral sensitivity in bullying, lower defender self-efficacy and moral disengagement in bullying. Results from the SEM showed that basic moral sensitivity in bullying was negatively related to pro-bully behavior and positively related to outsider and defender behavior, mediated by moral disengagement in bullying, which in turn was positively related to pro-bully behavior and negatively related to outsider and defender behavior. What differed in the relations between outsider and defender behaviors was the degree of defender self-efficacy.

Bystander motivation in bullying incidents: to intervene or not to intervene?

INTRODUCTION: This research sought to extend knowledge about bystanders in bullying situations with a focus on the motivations that lead them to different responses. The 2 primary goals of this study were to investigate the reasons for children's decisions to help or not to help a victim when witnessing bullying, and to generate a grounded theory (or conceptual framework) of bystander motivation in bullying situations. METHODS: Thirty students ranging in age from 9 to 15 years (M = 11.9; SD = 1.7) from an elementary and middle school in the southeastern United States participated in this study. Open- ended, semi-structured interviews were used, and sessions ranged from 30 to 45 minutes. We conducted qualitative methodology and analyses to gain an in-depth understanding of children's perspectives and concerns when witnessing bullying. RESULTS: A key finding was a conceptual framework of bystander motivation to intervene in bullying situations suggesting that deciding whether to help or not help the victim in a bullying situation depends on how bystanders define and evaluate the situation, the social context, and their own agency. Qualitative analysis revealed 5 themes related to bystander motives and included: interpretation of harm in the bullying situation, emotional reactions, social evaluating, moral evaluating, and intervention self-efficacy. CONCLUSION: Given the themes that emerged surrounding bystanders' motives to intervene or abstain from intervening, respondents reported 3 key elements that need to be confirmed in future research and that may have implications for future work on bullying prevention. These included: first, the potential importance of clear communication to children that adults expect bystanders to intervene when witnessing bullying; second, the potential of direct education about how bystanders can intervene to increase children's self-efficacy as defenders of those who are victims of bullying; and third, the assumption that it may be effective to encourage children's belief that bullying is morally wrong.

Ethnocultural empathy among students in health care education.

In a multicultural society, ethnocultural empathy has become an important element in most health settings and development of this capacity has become a central component for health care professionals in their interactions with patients and clients. In this study, differences in basic empathy and ethnocultural empathy were explored in a sample of 365 undergraduate students at the beginning and end of four master's programs in health care (medicine, psychology, nursing, and social work). Results showed that it was mainly psychology students in the first semester who had significantly higher general empathic skills and ethnocultural empathic skills compared to students in the other study programs. Few signs of differences between students in their first and in later semesters were obtained. The observed differences may be explained by (a) levels of admission grades and applications requirements or (b) different cultures and expectations from the surrounding milieus in the investigated study programs.