Assessing Cyberbullying in Higher Education

This project aims to expose information educators to various aspects of cyberbullying for the purpose of policy development in an environment of higher education. The preponderance of nation-wide research on cyberbullying is concentrated on adolescents; such efforts in college campuses are limited to individual endeavors. Cyberbullying research on college campuses lacks a unified definition of the concept. Although the states mandated most school districts to develop and enact some sort of policy, the law is silent on the college level cyberbullying. According to the literature, cyberbullying is reserved for adolescents; however, cyber-harassment or cyberstalking are related to adults. While cyberbullying shares with conventional bullying intimidation, aggression, and harm, it is unique because 1) the encounter is not face-to-face; 2) the perpetrator can employ varied means (e.g., cell-phones, texts, blogs, Internet, social media, etc.), and 3) the act can be undisclosed. The data was collected from a random sample of 511 students (out of a student population of approximately 6,000) in a Midwestern town by employing self-administered questionnaire. It was found that engagement with different social network groups and online communications with those with questionable identity are good predictor of increased vulnerability to the risks of being victimized. The data suggests being victimized leads to victimization. Although males differ from females in terms of the type and the extent of cyberbullying, no significant difference was found among the categories of student status or their class ranks