Motivation Behind Bullying Among Slovenian Primary School Bullies
Keywords:
bullying, motives for bullying, traditional bullying, cyberbullyingAbstract
Bullying has become one of the most urgent problems in schools. Therefore, effective prevention and appropriate intervention are imperative. The objective of the study was to investigate bullies’ perceptions of the motives behind different types of bullying. Students’ answers were based on their own real-life experiences in which they participated as bullies. In this descriptive non-experimental study, a questionnaire was applied to 782 Slovenian primary school students from 21 randomly chosen schools from 7 statistical regions of Slovenia. 286 of them were included in the further survey as bullies, more boys (185 or 64.7 %) than girls (101 or 35.3 %) and more eighth-graders (162 or 56.6 %) than sixth-graders (124 or 43.4 %). The results showed that revenge and reciprocation were the main motives for bullying, and confirm co-occurrence among traditional bullying and cyberbullying. Knowing the motives for bullying from the bully perspective is an important step towards understanding the specifics and dynamics of bullying and can help in planning the prevention and intervention strategies in schools.
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