Cyberbullying in first-year university students and its influence on their intentions to drop out

ABSTRACT

University dropout is a phenomenon of growing interest in the knowledge society. However, it is a complex phenomenon in which a variety of academic and social variables interact with each other. Cyberbullying is also something that has been the subject of increased research recently, and although it has most often been studied in primary and secondary education, it cannot be discounted from higher education. Because of that, the objective of this study was to determine whether there was a relationship between intentions to complete higher education or not and having been the victim of cyberbullying. We used a sample of 1653 students at a university in Spain who were asked to respond to an adaptation of the University Violence Questionnaire (UVC), analysing the data collected via descriptive statistics and the decision tree test. The results indicated that there was a relationship between having been the victim of cyberbullying and the intention to drop out of a university course, especially when the bullying behavior was social exclusion, impersonation, or spreading sexual images without consent. This study aimed to enhance understanding of university dropout, looking at how being the victim of cyberbullying interacted with the likelihood of students finishing their courses.

KEYWORDS:

• Cyberbullying
• intention to dropout
• higher education
• social integration
• persistence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Severo Ochoa Program of the Government of the Principality of Asturias [grant number BP20-116].