Measuring global bystander intervention and exploring its antecedents for helping refugees.

Nihan Albayrak‐Aydemir,Ilka Helene Gleibs

doi:10.1111/bjop.12474

Abstract

Although the bystander intervention model provides a useful account of how people help others, no previous study has applied it to a global emergency. This research aims to develop a scale for measuring global bystander intervention and investigate its potential antecedents in the Syrian refugee emergency. In Study 1 (N=80) and Study 2 (N=205), a 12-item scale was established through a substantive-validity assessment and a confirmatory factor analysis, respectively. Study 3 (N=601) explored the potential antecedents of the global bystander intervention, employing British and German samples. Results show that the global bystander intervention model worked for both samples, but there were significant between-group differences in terms of the extent to which they notice the emergency, know how to help, show political support, and donate money. Overall, the visibility of the global emergency aftermaths within the context has been deduced as a meaningful driver for between-group differences. This research provides the first empirical evidence on global bystander intervention and it offers timely suggestions to promote support for refugees or other victims of global disasters, especially among those who are distant to the disaster zone.

Highlights

We see news of global emergencies almost every day, often driven by violence, natural disasters, poverty, or displacement
We aimed to compare the substantive validity of all items with the identified twelve items only to test whether the identified items have a better representation of their respective constructs than all of the items
This study aims to a) validate the previously identified items as a scale through a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), b) scrutinize the extent to which the steps of the global bystander intervention model are 2 nc represents the number of assignments of an item to the correct construct, N represents the number of participants, and no represents the higher number of assignments of an item to an incorrect construct

Summary

Introduction

We see news of global emergencies almost every day, often driven by violence, natural disasters, poverty, or displacement. It is of great importance to research individual helping responses to such disasters from people who live geographically further away, especially through two key questions: How does the helping process take place in global emergencies and what factors may be associated with such helping? This research will attempt to answer these questions in the light of the bystander intervention model In doing so, it will focus on the Syrian refugee emergency, which is one of the most prominent global emergencies nowadays with the biggest displaced population reported to date. Syrians began to leave their homeland in 2011 due to an ascending civil conflict, and since the

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