Research Article

The Canadian Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 6, Issue 1, January 2018 ISSN 1927-8942 (Print Edition), ISSN 1927-8950 (Online Edition)

Research Article

Page 107-122

Factors Related to Cyber Bullying among High School Students in Hanoi, Vietnam Duc Tran1, Raghda Shukri1*, Diep Do2 1

Department of Nursing, Tokyo Human Health Sciences University Vietnam. Hanoi, Vietnam.2Ministry of Health, Department of Disease Management, Hanoi, Vietnam *Corresponding Author Email Address: [email protected]

ABSTRACT Objective: To explore the factors related to cyber bullying among school students in Hanoi, Vietnam. Subjects and Methods: An analytical cross-sectional exploratory study was conducted on a cluster sample consisted of 406 students in the three grades of 10 th, 11th and 12th at Chuong My A High School in Hanoi, Vietnam. Data was collected using a standard questionnaire developed by Jing Wang in 2009 and standardized to the Vietnamese culture by Nguyen Thi Thu Trang in 2014. The questionnaire contained items measured the cyber bullying factors for the cyberbullies and for the cyber victims. Human rights issue was taken into consideration for the sensitivity of the issue. Results: Findings showed that 12.6 % of students were involved in cyber bullying, 10.1% of the students were cyber victims and 4.2 % were both cyber victims and cyber bullies. Factors related to cyber bullying were gender, close friends who have been involved in violence, injured and have been in suicidal attempts. Factors related to the cyber victims were students disciplined to violence, grade level, smoking history and frequency of family violence, P < 0.05. Conclusion: It was concluded that cyberbullying is common in the Chuong My A High School in Hanoi. Explored related factors are to be taken in consideration by school administrator, school teachers and students’ family members. Authors recommend strengthening the coordination between families and schools for the purpose of violence prevention in general and cyber bullying in schools in particular. Keywords: Bullying, Cyber bullying, Violence, Cyber victims, Electronic Violence, High School Students, Vietnam

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14206/canad.j.clin.nutr.2018.01.07

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Citation: Tran D, Shukri R, Do D. Factors Related to Cyber Bullying among High School Students in Hanoi, Vietnam. Canad J Clin Nutr 2018; 6 (1): 107-122.

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INTRODUCTION According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it was reported that 1.3 million teenagers died in 2012. Two out of five deaths among young people between 15 and 19 were due to suicide and violence (1). School violence is a significant problem in schools (2). Violence is defined as it is the behavior of a person or group of people who knowingly injure people who do not have the capacity or ability to protect themselves. This behavior is repeated many times, possibly in the form of: Physical Violence (punching, kicking, taking victim's articles); Verbal Violence (ridicule, offense); Social Violence (Discrimination, Isolation, Boycotts) and Indirect Violence (Spreading Rumors) (3). According to Willard in 2004, there are eight different forms of cyber bullying, which include flaming (online fights), Harassment (sending vulgar messages), Denigration (posting gossip), Impersonation, Outing (sharing people’s secrets), Trickery (tricking someone into sharing secrets), Exclusion, and Cyberstalking (4). Since the beginning of time people have always had to deal with bullies. Just like anything else, however, things tend to evolve with technology. With the evolution of social media and technology, some adolescents are simply unable to escape harassment from their peers in school. This social phenomenon is what has come to be known as cyber bullying. Recently, many studies in the world point to another type of violence in the cybernetic world using mobile phones and the internet, which is electronic violence. This violence is characterized by the use of electronic communication devices (calls, text messages, images, videos, emails, chat rooms, websites) Slonje and Smith in 2008 found that when it comes to cyber bullying, males are more often being the cyberbullies, or can be also named as the aggressors, than females. It was also found that 36.2 percent of students were unaware of the gender of their aggressors. This is intriguing because for one it is the same percentage as the number of

cyber bullying and not being able to escape the perpetrate (5). This allows anonymous users to send private messages doing the harassment, posting disparaging comments on The Canadian Journal of Clinical Nutrition is published by Global Science Heritage, (http://www.globalscienceheritage.org) Registered publisher by the Library and Archives/Government of Canada, (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca)

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actually know who is bullying them, which adds to the fear and stigma that is related to

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males who bullied, but most importantly because it shows that 1 in 3 students don’t


social networking sites, and posting sensitive images that hurt people (6,7). Unfortunately, this violent behavior is accepted in some groups of the youth. Electronic violence has been a relatively new form of violence for the past decade and several studies have shown a link between this form of violence and suicide among the American teenagers (8). Charisse Nixon's systematic review has shown that adolescents with this violent behavior have high level of depression, anxiety, loneliness, suicidal behavior somatic symptoms, and young people who cause this behavior are more concerned with increased use of drugs, offenses and aggressive behaviors (9). Researchers have conducted numerous studies on the types of people who are cyberbullied, or what is often referred to as “cyber victims”. One of the studies found that males are more likely to be on the receiving end of direct cyberbullying while females are more likely to be the victims of indirect cyberbullying, such as online gossip among peers (10). Another study looked at the characteristics of the victims and found out that people felt they were the victims of cyberbullying because of their personal appearance, interpersonal problems, as well as simply having discrepancies about their views (11). It was also found in another study that 14 percent of victims had been bullied because of factors such as their sexual orientation (12). It was also found out that the most common platforms for cyber bullying are the social media, text messaging, and emailing which were used to bully students about half of the time, followed by blogs forums and chat rooms which were 25 percent. This form was common because it can allow for the bully to remain completely anonymous to the victim. The aggressor create a fake account and build an own identity in order to bully others (13). The role of cell phones in cyberbullying was investigated and it was found that the most prevalent type was gossiping via text message, followed by gossiping over the phone, and concluded with

In Vietnam, with the rapid development of science and technology, more and more media and entertainment services are born to meet the increasing needs of people. The Canadian Journal of Clinical Nutrition is published by Global Science Heritage, (http://www.globalscienceheritage.org) Registered publisher by the Library and Archives/Government of Canada, (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca)

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the perpetrators of gossiping while boys made slightly more threats via cell phones (10).

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threatening others over text message. Also it was found that girls were more often, not


The emergence and vigorous development of the internet has changed the Vietnamese life style. For the youth, the internet is a very useful tool for studying, working as well as entertaining. However, in addition to the positive aspects, the use of the internet, it has many negative effects that affect the way students live today. At present, there is very little research in e-school violence in Vietnam. Starting from that practice, this study was conducted with the aim of exploring the factors involved in school electronic violence to make appropriate recommendations.

SUBJECTS & METHODS Study design and sampling. An analytical cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 406 students in three class levels/grades of 10th, 11th and 12th at “Chuong My A High School” in Chuong My District in the city of Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. The study was conducted from February, 2016 to April, 2016. The Chuong My A High School has 15 classes per level/grade and an average of 40 students in each class. Using the cluster sampling method, with each cluster corresponding to one class, the chosen number of clusters was 11 in each random block, ending up choosing four classes from Grade 10, three classes from grade 11 and four classes from grade 12. Data measurement. The measurement tool consisted of a standard questionnaire. The questionnaire was constructed by the authors based on a questionnaire published by Jing Wang's in 2009 which was used as the measurement tool to study school bullying problem among the American youths (14). This same questionnaire was validated and standardized by the Vietnamese researcher Nguyen Thi Thu Trang in 2014 on school violence in Hanoi (15). Aggressors’ Violence and victims’ Violence were assessed by participant’s responding as "Yes" to one or more of three questions, and accordingly, a subject was identified as an electronic aggressor or an electronic victim. The questionnaire contained questions related to demographic characteristics, family

30 randomly selected students from classes that were not included in the sample. The questionnaire items were clear to all students. The Canadian Journal of Clinical Nutrition is published by Global Science Heritage, (http://www.globalscienceheritage.org) Registered publisher by the Library and Archives/Government of Canada, (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca)

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use, electronic game play and watching violent movies. The questionnaire was piloted on

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concerns, close friend’s involvement in violence, school and teacher attention, substance


The demographic characteristics included age, gender, number of siblings in the house, birth order in the family, religion and school grade. It also included factors related to cyberbullying like smoking, playing games, watching violent movies, intention to commit suicide, and reasons for committing cyber bullying. Data collection. Three research assistants guided by the primary investigator gathered the information from sample participants in each of the selected classes using the standard questionnaire. Before starting the data collection, the research assistants completed a thorough training session on validity and reliability and the appropriate methods of data collection. The questionnaire needed 20 minutes to be completed for those who answered yes to the questions indicating being as aggressors or victims, and only 10 minutes for those who were not considered as aggressors or victims. The data collectors distributed the consent forms and the questionnaires to the students using the time of one of the class sessions and waited in the class room answering participants’ questions and assuring students’ safety. Ethical approval. Permission to conduct the study was taken from the school administrator, whom he himself took the approval from the Ministry of Education. Human subject issues and human rights were taken care of because of the high sensitivity of the issue. Anonymity and confidentiality were considered and each participant signed the human rights consent form before completing the questionnaire. Each participant knew that s/he has the right of not participating or not completing the questionnaire even after signing the consent form. Although no such cases occurred. Statistical analysis. Data analysis was made using the software package IBM SPSS Statistics version 22. Descriptive statistics were computed including frequency and percentage of variables. Significant statistical difference was computed using the χ2 test. Confounding variables were controlled using the Multivariate Logistic Regression

Results summarized in table 1 show that the study included 406 participants, 34.2% were boys and 65.8% were girls. The age range completely matched the student's age, no slow The Canadian Journal of Clinical Nutrition is published by Global Science Heritage, (http://www.globalscienceheritage.org) Registered publisher by the Library and Archives/Government of Canada, (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca)

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RESULTS

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Model.


or fast learners. In terms of academic performance, only 4.4% of students were weak students below the average level, the majority of students (62.3%) were in the good level and the excellent students constituted 33.3%. Good conduct had dominated by 90.9%. The number of siblings in the household of three or more (including research subjects) accounted for 51% and the majority (48.5%) of the respondents were the eldest in their families followed by being the middle child (26.8%) and being the youngest child constituted the lowest percentage (24.6%). Percentage of smokers in each level 10, 11, and 12 were 36.2%, 28.3% and 35.5% respectively. It was found that out of the 406 study participants, 12.6% were involved in electronic violence as cyberbullies, 10.1% of the students were victims of violent behavior and 4.2% were both victims and bullies at the same time as illustrated in Figure 1. Table 2 classifies the causes of cyberbullying. Highest cause was the misunderstanding (28.8%), followed by friction (22.4%). Being put on the scandal constituted 14.1% and followed by the Jealousy cause in a 2.9%. Other causes constituted (22.9%) such as being teased or exploited. More than half of the violent behavior was committed by the classmates (51.2%). Meanwhile Tables 3 and 4 show the logistic regression model of factors related to cyberbullying and cyber bullying victims, considering the long list of other causes with very small percentages such as being teased or exploited. In table 3, it is illustrated that the eighth-grader students were subjected to violence 0.65 times greater than the10th grade students, P 0.05.

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suicide and suffered by family members. Hosmer and Lemeshow test results showed all

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cyber victims such as gender, being involved in violence, ever thought of committing


DISCUSSION As computers and cell phones become more prevalent among teens, cyber bullying is emerging as a new form of bullying. Results of this research reveal that 12.6% of students engage in cyberbullying, 10.1% of students are victims of violence and 4.2% are both victims and bullies. These findings are different from other studies due to different reasons such as the limited duration of the incidence of violence in each study, for example, Kowalski in the United States found out that with the participation of nearly 4,000 students in Grades 6 to 8 showed 11% victims, 4% electronic violence and 7% both victims and perpetrators in the past two months (7). Mishnaa F in his study in Canada found out in a sample of more than 2000 students in grades 6-11, 25% are cyberbullying victims, 8% have electronic violent behavior and 25% are both victims and having electronic violent behavior in the past 3 months (16). In addition, in Vietnam, high school students are less likely to use the phone than westerners and if they use the phone, they can use it with no internet access. Thus, this is another reason for the lower incidence of e-violence in Vietnam than in other studies abroad. However, the results are similar to those of Nguyen Thi Thu Trang study in 2014 (15). The reason behind this lower incidence in Vietnam is that the students themselves are not well educated in ethics, morality, personality and lifestyle. They do not have enough skills to deal with and solve daily situations (17). Other studies have shown that students are expected to follow popular youth movements and hurt others to make them feel good and to make fun of themselves. Through the internet, aggressors do not see the response of the victim and are not able to recognize the damage they have caused. Some young people think that this is normal and this behavior is accepted by the internet and youth community (18). In Vietnam, according to the Ministry of Education and Training, one student out of

physical violence (19). Violence does not end in real life. Some students use electronic devices to record such violence and spread it on popular social networks around the The Canadian Journal of Clinical Nutrition is published by Global Science Heritage, (http://www.globalscienceheritage.org) Registered publisher by the Library and Archives/Government of Canada, (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca)

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is forced to leave school because of a physical violence; one out of nine schools has

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5,200 students participates in a physical violence. For every 11,000 students, one student


world such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube etc ... This action affect the status and honor of others. A fight, stand watching, cheering, agitating and filming to upload the network all are irresponsible non-human behaviors. However, the cause of being a victim is not the student’s fault alone, it is the responsibility of the family and the school as well. Regression analysis results in this study showed that students rarely witness violence as a protective factor. The risk of violent behavior among participants injured by family members was 2.343 times higher than those who were not injured, P = 0.003. Good family education has been shown to be an important protective factor for adolescents from violence in all forms of violence (18, 24). The results also show that some parents who lack attention to their children, do not often follow the psychological and emotional development of their children to timely correct deviations and guide them along a good path. On the school side, for students involved in electronic violence, the probability of other students to experience electronic violence was only 0.17, P