Bullying and character development: An examination of character strengths associated with bullying and cyberbullying in post-primary schools in Ireland

Abstract

A substantive body of research demonstrates negative bias towards reporting characteristics of young people associated with bullying and cyberbullying in schools, as both victims and perpetrators. The current study proposes a different approach. A sample of 2,799 post-primary school pupils aged 12 to 19 years (M=15.5, SD=1.66), divided equally across males and females, completed the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths for Youth questionnaire (VIA-Youth: Park & Peterson, 2005) and Corcoran’s (2013) modified version of the netTEEN questionnaire (Machmutow, Perren, Sticca, & Alsaker, 2012). A series of stepwise regression analyses found that the strength of “prudence” was a common denominator predicting participation in school bullying - as both perpetrators and victims of traditional and cyberbullying. Furthermore, the current study identified a list of other character strengths, such as “fairness” and “love”, which predicted each of the four bullying groups (traditional bullies, traditional victims, cyber bullies, cyber victims) differently. Implications of the current research for both practitioners and researchers are discussed, including the potential for the creation of a pro-social, strength-based programme to prevent bully/victim problems in schools.