How students with autism spectrum conditions understand traditional bullying and cyberbullying

ABSTRACT

Students with ASC are at heightened risk for bullying and their understanding of bullying is known to protect them from involvement in it (Humphrey and Hebron 2015). However, only a handful of studies have examined how students with ASC understand traditional bullying and none of them focused on cyberbullying. To fill this gap, we investigated how traditional bullying and cyberbullying are understood from the perspectives of 89 students with ASC attending inclusive schools and 490 students without ASC. Twenty vignettes were used from (Campbell et al. 2017a), based on the Olweus (1999) definition of bullying and verified by a Delphi technique. In the majority of traditional bullying and cyberbullying vignettes, students with ASC made more accurate responses than inaccurate ones and demonstrated higher accuracy rates than students without ASC. Findings of linear multiple regression analyses pointed out ASC status as a predictive variable for understanding both types of bullying, along with students' age for understanding cyberbullying. The findings highlight the ability rather than inability to understand bullying in students with ASC. It is therefore critical to include the voices and experiences of students with ASC in our research endeavour.

KEYWORDS:

• Bullying
• traditional
• cyberbullying
• autism spectrum conditions

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Associate Professor Paul Shield, Professor Harvey Goldstein and Professor Steve Elliot for their advice on data analyses, and Professor Steve Elliot and Professor Claire Wyatt-Smith for their invaluable comments on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Yoon-Suk Hwang is a Research Fellow at the Learning Sciences Institute Australia. Hwang’s research aims at listening to the voices of disadvantaged people and investigating ways of enhancing the quality of their school, family, and community life. Her recent research examined the applications of mindfulness intervention for improving behavioural and psychological well-being of individuals living with disabilities.

Julie Dillon-Wallace is a Lecturer in the QUT Faculty of Education’s School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education. Her research and teaching interests include: maternal well-being, maternal employment, inclusive education, quantitative methodology, and pedagogical practice.

Marilyn Campbell is a Professor in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education in the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology. Her main teaching area is in the Masters of School Guidance and Counselling and in the Masters of Educational and Developmental Psychology. Her research expertise is in anxiety disorders in children and adolescents and in bullying, especially cyberbullying.

Jill Ashburner is the Manager, Research and Development at Autism Queensland. Ashburner’s career in the disability sector has spanned almost four decades, including a number of senior positions in education and disability-specific organisations. Her doctoral study explored sensory processing and classroom behavioural, emotional, and educational outcomes of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Beth Saggers is a Senior Lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology. She teaches and researches within the fields of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), catering for diversity, inclusive practices and behaviour support. She has over 25 years of teaching experience working with students on the autism spectrum and in a range of education positions across Queensland, Australia.

Suzanne Carrington is the Assistant Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Education at the Queensland University of Technology. She teaches and researches in the areas of inclusive education, policy and practice, learning support, autistic spectrum disorder, teaching/professional development, and service learning.

Kirstine Hand is a Research Project officer at LSIA ACU. She has extensive experience across a range of educational settings, having worked with children across early childhood to adolescence with diverse abilities. Her research interests include transitions across home and school contexts, inclusive education, early intervention, and social inclusion as well as quantitative methodologies.

ORCID

Yoon-Suk Hwang http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6952-0117

Marilyn Campbell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4477-2366

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number LP0882087]; The Trust Company.