SUSS PSY390 Research: Finding Best Cyberbullying Intervention

This research proposal aims to identify the most effective cyberbullying intervention programs for secondary school students in Singapore, where cyberbullying is a growing concern. The study reviews existing literature on technical and non-technical prevention strategies, highlighting the importance of both approaches. It emphasizes the role of parents, peers, and educators in supporting victims and fostering a healthy social environment. The proposal outlines a quasi-experimental pre-test post-test design involving two groups: an experimental group receiving both technical and non-technical interventions, and a control group receiving only technical interventions. The study will employ quantitative data analysis using chi-square tests to evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions and test the hypotheses that non-technical interventions are more effective and that a student-centered approach involving parents, teachers, and peers is beneficial. Ethical considerations, including informed consent and anonymity, are also addressed. Desklib provides a platform for students to access similar research papers and solved assignments.

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Finding Best Cyberbullying Intervention Program for Students
Name of the Students
Name of the University
Author note

1RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Introduction 200 words
Cyberbullying is a phenomenon which is emerging and spreading rapidly like an
epidemic. In March 2018, a survey commissioned by Talking Point found that three in four
teens in Singapore reported to have experienced Cyberbullying (Ruiz, 2019). This new form
of bullying or harassment in not only damaging the social cultural and ethical values of the
new generation, it also restrict the career growth of the students by harming their mental
health. In has been proven that the social pillars such as healthcare service, education system
and low enforcement have the capabilities to rescue the new generation from this social
epidemic.
The aim of this research is to explore the effective intervention or prevention d
programs of Cyberbullying in order to find the most effective technique or strategy.
Therefore the purpose of this study is strengthening the secondary school students by
equipping them with scientifically sound method to combat cyber bulling. Therefore, the
research questions are
 What are the strategic intervention programs to prevent the impact and occurrence of
Cyberbullying within secondary school students?
 Which is the most effective intervention program to prevent the impact and occurrence of
Cyberbullying within secondary school students?
 What will be the best method or approach to implement such prevention technique within
current provisions?
Literature review and Hypothesis development
Cyberbullying:

2RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Cyberbullying is an act of posting, sending and spreading false, cruel and harmful
images, videos and audios through internet, especially through social media for bullying a
person. It is a technologically advance method of bullying or harassing someone.
Cyberbullying is experienced in many ways, such as Harassment or repeated insults through
various forms; Defamation of a person’s character through derogatory postings, rumours, or
images; Flaming or fighting messages using anger and vulgar language; Outing or deceiving
someone into sharing secrets or private information; Polling such as posting an image on a
voting website to make fun of a person’s looks; Impersonation or identity theft to embarrass
or destroy a person’s identity; Cyber Stalking including sending intimidating or threatening
messages; Sexting including sexual solicitation and/or exploitation; Unsafe digital
communities with shared interests, such as social communities that validate eating disorders,
violence, or drug use (Rice et al., 2015). A survey of 2014 in Singapore found that 1 in 9
teenagers are victims of Cyberbullying. This situation has decorated severely by 2018, where
a survey in 2018 has found that 3 in 4 teens in Singapore are victims of Cyberbullying
(Baldry et al., 2018).
Prevention strategies
Many strategies are available to prevent the effect or occurrence of Cyberbullying
with two different implementation patterns namely addressing the Cyberbullying and
Mitigating the impact of Cyberbullying. Both technical and non-technical strategies are used
to address and mitigate the Cyberbullying. However, currently almost 75% of social activities
are utilising the technical strategies (Bauman, Toomey & Walker, 2013). Most utilised
technical strategy is protecting the children and adulations via web security or protection
system. It includes contacting the convicted persons online, changing login id or password,
deleting anonymous messages and others. There is another technical solution or scheme,
which very popular in UK named Beat bullying Cyber monitor. In this system students will

3RESEARCH PROPOSAL
be trained to monitor any unauthorised activities with their social media profiles. Apart from
that virtual peer support is also available to supportive through remote controlling the device.
The non technical techniques are mainly awareness programs that involves with
counselling victims, social support, emotional bonding and others. Although the impacts of
these non-technical aspects are not directly visible, however the impacts of these activities
have been proven 5% more effective for long term improvement for teenagers in USA (Berne
et al., 2013). These programs are currently used as alternative or supporting short term
programs of mainstream cyber-security strategies. In England Thompson, Robinson, and
Smith Thompson, Robinson, and Smith evaluated two e-safety films to make adulations
aware of the threats. There are at least 10 to 15 reports that showed that these films have
indirectly help the victims to get recovered from their traumatised situation (Sabella, Patchin,
& Hinduja, 2013). Counselling and community building are another two non technical
strategies where victims can convey their experience to someone, from which they can
release their emotional burden while making some other teenagers aware of those situations.
Role of personnel related with the victims
Along with the safety programs and cyber security strategies parents, peers and
educators has huge responsibility to help the victim emotionally and psychologically to be
completely recovered. Not only for victims, but parents also can make their children aware by
stating the situation and teaching them strategies to avoid the possibilities. Similarly, the
friends, peers, classmates and even siblings can act as a big support in the process of getting
recovered from any mentally unhealthy situation caused by Cyberbullying. Communication
and socio-emotional bonding can improve the 35% of mental health situation of an average
person (Slonje, Smith & FriséN, 2013). At the same time, educators as well as educational
organisations have the responsibility to develop healthy and supportive environment for the

4RESEARCH PROPOSAL
students where they can share their experience and gain knowledge about how to get rid of
Cyberbullying.
Therefore, there are two dependent and two independent variables. The independent
variables are strategies and social environment of victims. The dependent variables are
effectiveness of strategies and student cantered approach. The hypotheses are:
H1: Providing non-technical intervention or prevention program is more effective than
technical development program
H2: Student cantered approach can be executed through the involvement of parents, teachers
and peers
Methodology
The purpose of this research is to explore the distribution of declared variable and to
find the interrelation within the variables. Therefore, the design of this study will exploratory
to gain all the additional outcomes besides the pre-declared estimations. The study will be
focused on a particular location or region. In this case the study location will be the school,
where the anti-Cyberbullying strategies will be implemented. Therefore, to measure the
possible outcomes of various strategies with more accurate approximation the study has to
focus on more numerical and practical based approach (Blaikie & Priest, 2019). Therefore,
the study will focus on the positivist approach to conduct the research. Because of this
selection of design and approach the scope of the executable method will be more precise and
concentrated on Quasi-Experimental pre-test post-test design. In this research method the
study needs to have two groups to study and compare. At the same time, there will not be any
intermediate assessment stage to either regulate or assess the outcomes.

5RESEARCH PROPOSAL
The Quasi-Experimental groups will be made by segregating the target participants
into two segments (Neuman, 2013). For sampling process the ordered random sampling will
be conducted, where the participants will be chosen through a dichotomous question. The,
pre-test will be conducted to identify their present psychological situation, confidence in
using social media and ability to handling such harassments. After that, the experimental
group of will be provided with technical and non technical anti-Cyberbullying program. At
the same time, the control group will be provided with only technical strategies and
programs. After continuing these programs through 6 month, a post-test will be conducted to
identify the changes in their pre-observed psychological attributes. The total sample size will
be 60, where 50% or 30 students will be considered as experimental group and another group
of 30 students will be considered as control group.
As per the research method, the outcomes will be ordinal and numerical values.
Therefore, to measure those values and formulate the conclusion with accuracy quantitative
data analysis will be required through chi-squire test. The chi-squire test results will be tested
with the testing probability value which is 0.05. To examine the pre-test data, the percentage
distribution states tics will be used. It will help to monitor the demographical distribution of
the participants. The aim of this quantitative analysis will be to justify and authenticate the
hypotheses taken earlier.
The ethical consideration is one of the most important factors of any research, which
present the viability, authenticity and values of the study (Coolican, 2017). Therefore, before
conducting the studies, the students were provided with an agreement paper, where they can
see the purpose of this study. Student who will acknowledge entering the research process
will only be taken for this study. At the same time, the identity and other personal details of
the participants will not be exposed in the final research. Besides, the collected information
will be used only for this study.

6RESEARCH PROPOSAL

7RESEARCH PROPOSAL
References:
Baldry, A. C., Farrington, D. P., Sorrentino, A., & Blaya, C. (2018). Cyberbullying and
Cybervictimization. In International Perspectives on Cyberbullying (pp. 3-23).
Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Bauman, S., Toomey, R. B., & Walker, J. L. (2013). Associations among bullying,
cyberbullying, and suicide in high school students. Journal of adolescence, 36(2),
341-350.
Bauman, S., Toomey, R. B., & Walker, J. L. (2013). Associations among bullying,
cyberbullying, and suicide in high school students. Journal of adolescence, 36(2),
341-350.
Berne, S., Frisén, A., Schultze-Krumbholz, A., Scheithauer, H., Naruskov, K., Luik, P., ... &
Zukauskiene, R. (2013). Cyberbullying assessment instruments: A systematic
review. Aggression and violent behavior, 18(2), 320-334.
Blaikie, N., & Priest, J. (2019). Designing social research: The logic of anticipation. John
Wiley & Sons.
Coolican, H. (2017). Research methods and statistics in psychology. Psychology Press.
Neuman, W. L. (2013). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches.
Pearson education.
Rice, E., Petering, R., Rhoades, H., Winetrobe, H., Goldbach, J., Plant, A., ... & Kordic, T.
(2015). Cyberbullying perpetration and victimization among middle-school
students. American Journal of Public Health, 105(3), e66-e72.

8RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Ruiz, R. M. N. M. (2019). CURBING CYBERBULLYING AMONG STUDENTS: A
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF EXISTING LAWS AMONG SELECTED
ASEAN COUNTRIES. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences, 4(3).
Sabella, R. A., Patchin, J. W., & Hinduja, S. (2013). Cyberbullying myths and
realities. Computers in Human behavior, 29(6), 2703-2711.
Slonje, R., Smith, P. K., & FriséN, A. (2013). The nature of cyberbullying, and strategies for
prevention. Computers in human behavior, 29(1), 26-32.