Cyber-Bullying: Annotated Bibliography

ABSTRACT

Research on the topic of cyber-bullying has proliferated over the past decade, particularly on its impact on school-aged children. Thus, it would be of interest to examine the scope and extent of research interest in the topic in scholarly publications. This paper reports on a reference citation analysis of the database PsycINFO, using ‘cyber-bullying’ in a keyword search. In rank order, the major foci of the research involved the issues of intervention or treatment, profile of offenders, comparisons to traditional bullying, legal implications, risk factors, social dynamics, gender, prevalence, and measurement factors.

Introduction

Mobile communications are undoubtedly a ubiquitous feature of modern life, particularly since the

advent

The database PsycINFO indexes a large number of journals in the field of education. For this reason, the current research design utilized this major database to survey research trends in the literature on the specific topic of cyber-bullying. In addition, previous studies have illustrated the benefits of research designs that involve trend analysis approaches

(Garfield, 1979; Piotrowski & Gallant, 2009; Reynolds & Sundberg, 1976; White & White, 1979). The present study aims to obtain an overview of the scope and research emphasis of the issue of cyberbullying.

To that end, a reference citation analysis of published literature was performed, using a keyword search strategy (Piotrowski & Perdue, 1986).

Method

A keyword search of the term ‘cyber-bullying’ was performed in PsycINFO, as this research file is considered the most regarded and leading database in the behavioral and social sciences (see Brand,

1979; Piotrowski & Perdue, 1986). The search was conducted on October 30, 2011. This procedure yielded 157 reference citations to empirical studies, commentaries, books/chapters, and

However, there are several major aspects of this topic that have received much research attention; i.e., examining the profile or characteristics of abusers, comparing traditional vs. cyber-bullying, legal concerns, and the role of school personnel in controlling pupils’ behaviors. As noted in Table 1, there seems to be investigatory efforts to determine the most efficacious approaches or interventions in either abating or mitigating the onerous outcomes associated with cyber-bullying. At the same time, several factors (that appear to play a key role in the occurrence and maintenance of this problematic, enigmatic behavior) seem to be largely ignored by researchers, such as gender and age factors. Moreover, there is a dearth of studies with a focus on family issues and socio-economic factors. Overall, there seems to be an equal emphasis on the level of educational setting. That is, researchers have focused across all 3 major school levels: middle school, high school, and college.

One area that has been largely ignored is the elementary level, where there is the potential to