Cyberbullying victimisation and school dropout intention among South Korean adolescents: the moderating role of peer/teacher support

ABSTRACT

Using the social-ecological approach, this study examined the link between cyberbullying victimisation and the intention to drop out of school among school-aged adolescents in South Korea. This study used self-reported data from 11,132 students aged 10–19 who had participated in the 2016 Korean Children and Youth Rights Study. Multivariate logistic regressions were performed to investigate the relationship between cyberbullying victimisation, social-ecological variables, and school dropout intention. In Step 1, cyberbullying victimisation was positively associated with students’ intention to drop out. All family factors (Step 2) and peer/school factors (Step 3) were significantly associated with the intention to drop out, except for peer victimisation. In Step 4, higher levels of peer/teacher support were found to buffer the association between cyberbullying victimisation and dropout intention. Findings from the study suggest that specific prevention and intervention programmes should be developed and implemented to improve adolescents’ well-being.

KEYWORDS:

• Cyberbullying victimisation
• school dropout intention
• social-ecological model
• peer/teacher support
• South Korean adolescents

Acknowledgments

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical standards

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants for being included in the study.

Disclosure statement

All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jungup Lee

Dr. Jungup Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at the National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on identifying multi-level risk and protective factors (e.g., family, peer, school, and community levels) that shape various patterns of externalizing and internalizing behaviours to facilitate the development of more effective prevention and intervention strategies for social service professionals providing services to children and adolescents. Her research interests also include traditional and cyberbullying, victimization and perpetration, at-risk children and youth, school violence and safety, child maltreatment, juvenile justice and criminal justice, mental health and substance abuse, and cultural diversity.

JongSerl Chun

Dr. JongSerl Chun is a Professor at Department of Social Welfare at Ewha Womans University. Dr. Chun earned her PhD from School of Social Work at University of Texas at Austin. Also, she completed her National Institute on Drug Abuse sponsored post-doctoral fellowship, and received a research specialist appointment at Department of Psychiatry & Institute for Health Policy Studies in University of California, San Francisco. Her research focuses on alcohol and drug addiction, gambling addiction, child & adolescent welfare, and public health in social work. Her work has resulted in more than 100 publications in national and international top journals.

Jinyung Kim

Jinyung Kim is a PhD student at Department of Social Welfare at Ewha Womans University. Ms. Kim as a research assistance, was and currently involved in several projects including the questionnaire development for Korean Youth Risk Behavior Survey, smartphone addiction program, and development of cyberbullying scale. Her research interests focus on multicultural social work, mixed method research, internet addiction, adolescent health risk behaviors, and child & adolescent welfare.

Jieun Lee

Jieun Lee is a student on a master’s course at Department of Social Welfare at Ewha Womans University. Her research interests include big data analysis on social welfare problems, alcohol addiction, smartphone addiction and child & adolescent welfare. She is involved in projects including development of cyberbullying scale and interventions for alcohol use of college students as a research assistance.