Impact of Bullying on Students’ Behavioral Engagement

Abstract

Bullying is a social phenomenon that has seen across the world and the behavioral engagement refers to a large range of student behaviors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of Teacher Bullying (TB) and Peer Bullying (PB) on student’s Behavioral Engagement (BE) and to make out the comparison between the public and private university students in Islamabad, Pakistan. A quantitative approach and convenient sampling has been used in this study. Questionnaire was distributed among the 400 University students. With the help of SPSS, linear regression analysis and independent two sample t-tests have been used and results indicated that TB and PB significantly affect the students’ BE. In addition, there was a significant mean difference between Public and Private University students and the impact was high in Public universities as compared to Private. Hence the findings included that due to bullying students did not participate in the class and did not follow the teachers’ instruction. The originality of the study is that it focused on the behavioral aspect regarding bullying that was not very much investigated among the University students in Pakistan because the previous studies were focused on the moral and psychological effects among the schools and colleges students. This study is limited regarding the two dimensions of the behavioral engagement. Implications regarding the bullying influence on behavioral engagement have been discussed. Further research can be possible by including the other dimensions of behavioral engagement, giving the preventive measure and by increasing the sample size of the study.