Investigation of High School Students' Coping Strategies with Cyberbullying

Abstract

This study aims to examine the knowledge levels of high school students regarding coping strategies for cyberbullying. The sample of the study consists of 896 high school students from three different high schools in the Kahramanmaraş province. The survey model is used in the research design. The Coping Strategies for Cyberbullying Scale, developed by Koç et al. (2016), was employed as the data collection tool. The Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis H tests were utilized for the analysis of the obtained data. It was found that the knowledge levels of students in coping strategies for cyberbullying showed a significant difference between girls and boys, particularly in the total score and the sub-dimensions of enhancing cognitive security and privacy, help-seeking, avoidance, and ignoring. In the sub-dimension of help-seeking, those without computers showed a significant difference, while in the dimensions of avoidance and ignoring, students with computers showed a significant difference compared to those without. Regarding coping strategies for cyberbullying, it was observed that students who were aware of the legal process they would face when engaging in cyberbullying significantly differed from those who were unaware, particularly in the sub-dimensions of cognitive security, increasing privacy, and seeking information. Lastly, the study revealed a significant difference in the sub-dimension of help-seeking based on the grade level. In the sub-dimension of help-seeking, the scores of 11th and 10th-grade students were found to be significantly higher than those of 9th-grade students.