Giving Victims of Bullying a Voice: A Qualitative Study of Post Bullying Reactions and Coping Strategies

Current research on how adolescents cope with bullying is primarily quantitative, examines youth in Grades 1 through 6, and neglects to specifically assess how victims of bullying cope with being bullied. The current qualitative study explored the coping strategies of 22 rural middle- and high-schoo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Child & adolescent social work journal 2017-12, Vol.34 (6), p.543-555
Main Authors: Evans, Caroline B. R., Cotter, Katie L., Smokowski, Paul R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Aggression
Aggressiveness
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Bullying
Bystanders
Clinical Psychology
Coping
Coping strategies
Emotional regulation
Emotions
Grade 1
Help Seeking
Help seeking behavior
Personality and Social Psychology
Physical activity
Prosocial behavior
Psychology
Qualitative research
Rural areas
Rural communities
Sociology
Teenagers
Verbal aggression
Victims
Youth
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Current research on how adolescents cope with bullying is primarily quantitative, examines youth in Grades 1 through 6, and neglects to specifically assess how victims of bullying cope with being bullied. The current qualitative study explored the coping strategies of 22 rural middle- and high-school youth victimized by bullying. Results indicated that youth report using an array of emotion focused coping strategies (an internal coping strategy that focuses on emotion regulation) and problem focused coping strategies (active behaviors that are aimed to decrease or eradicate the stressor). These coping strategies included help seeking, physical and verbal aggression, standing up for themselves, and prosocial bystander behavior. While the majority of coping strategies were similar between middle- and high-school participants, these groups reported utilizing verbal and physical aggression in different ways. Further, certain coping strategies, such as help seeking and lashing out with physical and verbal aggression, were utilized as both emotion- and problem-focused coping strategies. Implications are discussed.
ISSN:0738-0151
1573-2797
DOI:10.1007/s10560-017-0492-6