A study of the perceived stress, appraisal, coping and psychosocial consequence of school bullying among Hong Kong Chinese adolescents

The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of Hong Kong adolescents involved in school bullying and to examine the stressors, perceived levels of stress, appraisals, coping strategies, coping resources and psychological consequences arising from school bullying.;This study attempted to link the two bodies of "Bullying" and "Cognitive-transaction coping" knowledge to conceptualize "coping with stress of school bullying" as being a complex interplay between the person and the environment. This involved incorporating a cross sectional study of the quantitative approach which was comprised of two phases: Phase one was essentially the conducting of a pilot test to ensure the reliability and selection of measuring scales which would be used for the purposes of conducting the main study. These scales included "School Bullying Behavior" scale, "Levels of Stress" scale, "Appraisals of School Bullying" scale, "Adolescent Coping of Bullying" scale, "Coping Resources of Bullying" scale and the "Psychosocial Consequences of Bullying" scale. Based on a convenient sample of sixty known-case adolescent victims, the six instruments selected for the main study, were shown to have reliability coefficients exceeding 0.70 and thus only minor modifications to measuring scales were made. Based on the pre-test findings, a questionnaire comprising 170 items was developed to measure the perceptions of adolescents toward school bullying behaviors, the levels of stress encountered and appraisals of school bullying. The questionnaire also measured coping strategies adopted by students, coping resources used, psychosocial consequences of school bullying and the social demographic profile of the main study.;Phase two was a large scale survey, whereby a convenient sample of 1319 junior secondary school students were recruited from five schools in the main study. A total number of 1211 students aged 11 years and older completed the questionnaires. The results of the main study showed that the three occurrences of bullying stressors which occurred most frequently were "Bullies make fun of my physical appearance unpleasantly", "Bullies insult me in front of other people" and "Bullies intentionally trick me". Findings also indicated that adolescents often appraised bullying as being "Physical harm or emotional hurt" and "Threaten of getting harm or loss". In particular, the highest levels of stress experienced by adolescents were in incidents where "Bullies gain peer support that I deserved to be bullied", "Bullies make fun of my physical appearance unpleasantly" and "Bullies insult me causing me to lose emotional control". Elaborating further on the Chi-square analysis measuring on the frequency of bullying behaviors, the results indicated that there were significant gender differences with regard to types of bullying behaviors such as "Being hit, beaten and punched", "Made fun of me and treated me badly", and "Being threatened to be beaten". In general, it was discovered that adolescent boys were more inclined to be involved in different types of direct and indirect bullying behaviors than girls.;The T-test analysis also highlighted the disparity between boys and girls with regard to direct bullying, indirect bullying, and levels of stress, emotional-focused coping strategies, parental support, parent-adolescent closeness and psychological distress of school bullying. The F-value of the one-way ANOVA showed that there were statistically significant grade differences in problem-focused coping strategies and parental support for the three grade groups. According to the results of correlation analyses, the levels of stress was found to have positive significant correlations with appraisal of threat, appraisal of harm, emotional focused coping strategies, social distress and psychological distress. Moreover, psychological distress was positively associated with appraisal of harm, appraisal of threat and emotional-focused coping strategies but negatively related to family support. Social distress was also found to be positively associated with appraisal of harm, appraisal of threat and emotional-focused coping strategies, however social distress was only negatively related to parental-support.;Significant findings of regression analyses showed that only appraisals of school bullying to be a mediator in the relationship between levels of stress and psychological distress of school bullying. Emotional focused coping strategies and parental-support were found to be the partial mediators. Moreover, appraisals of school bullying and emotional focused coping strategies were also found to be partial mediators in the relationship between levels of stress and social distress. More importantly, appraisals of school bullying and parent-adolescent closeness were also shown to play a moderating role in the link between levels of stress and psychological distress arising from school bullying. In contrast, only problem-focused coping strategies, friendship support and parent-adolescent closeness were seen to play a moderating role in the relationship between levels of stress and social distress. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).