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In a study spanning three years, Tetteh, Awaah., & Addo, (2022), have accentuated that there is a rise in cyberbullying among Ghanaian undergraduate students. The study, investigated students’ perceptions regarding the causes and effects of cyberbullying among university students and also to establish whether or not there would be statistically significant differences among cyberbullying victims, perpetrators, victim-perpetrators and bystanders in their thoughts on the causes and effects of cyberbullying on students’ social lives from a developing country perspective.
They hinged their study theoretically on Bandura’s theory of triadic reciprocal determinism and cyberbullying set forth by a psychologist, Albert Bandura in 1973. The theory states that a person’s behaviour affects and is affected by personal factors and the social environment. The theory is reflected in Triadic Reciprocal Causation, which states that a person’s behaviour is determined by three factors:
1. personal factors (cognitive, affective and biological);
2. the environment; and
3. the existing behaviour.
The researchers adopted a quantitative approach and cross-sectional survey design to collect primary data from 1,374 undergraduate students sampled from selected public universities in Ghana. Descriptive statistics and analysis of variance analyses were carried out using statistical package for the social sciences.
The study reports popularity among friends, extortion, retaliation, stress, trauma and low self-esteem as causes of cyberbullying. Also, cyberbullying resulted in difficulty trusting people, low self-esteem and increased stress. The study also found statistically significant differences among cyberbullying victims, perpetrators, victim-perpetrators and bystanders in their thoughts on the causes and effects of cyberbullying on students’ social lives.
This imply that cyberbullying has some fairly significant negative effects on students’ lives in Ghana and must be taken more seriously. Conditions must be created to ensure that perpetrators and victims are given the support needed to curb this menace. Detailed remediating measures are provided in the study.
Based on the findings, the study recommend that universities invest in guidance and counselling departments units to aid students in dealing with cyberbullying. These guidance and counselling departments should be resourced to help students deal with trust-related matters. It is further recommend that universities encourage students to report these incidents to enhance the control of cyberbullying. Universities should invest in other extracurricular activities to bring students the desired popularity.
The study is published by the Emerald journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research and indexed in Scopus.
Reference
Bandura, A. (1973), Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis, Prentice-Hall, New York, NY.
Tetteh, A., Awaah, F., & Addo, D. (2022). Perception of cyberbullying among students: the study of a developing country. Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, (ahead-of-print).
Andrew Tetteh is a graduate of the University of Professional Studies – Accra and currently enrolled on the Master programme under the World Bank Africa Centre of Excellence at the Lagos State University.
Fred Awaah is a lecture at the University of Professional Studies - Accra
Dorcas Addo is a graduate of the University of Professional Studies – Accra and currently enrolled on the Master programme under the World Bank Africa Centre of Excellence at the Lagos State University.