Exploring Effects of Cyberbullying on College Students - Research Paper

Introduction

In order to determine the effects if Cyberbullying amongst College students, I conducted research on a section of College Students. I administered online surveys to College students in my state (Replace this with the name of your State) for the purpose of data collection. The number of College Students who participated in the survey is 20,457 against a total number of 780, 000 College Students in my State. This number of participants is fair enough considering the fact that online surveys are likely to have few respondents.

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I employed random probability sampling methods to give equal opportunity to everyone to participate in the survey. "Probability sampling is based on the fact that every member of a population has a known and equal chance of being selected" (Stephanie, 2015).

Since the research aimed at determining the relationship between Cyber-Bullying and its effects, I used a cross-sectional study. The questions enquired if they have been Cyberbullied before and whether it affected them later on in their day-to-day lives. Thus in this way, a comparison of two groups of people as possible, one group being those that have been bullied before and the other group is that of those who have never been bullied before. "The defining feature of a cross-sectional study is that it can compare different population groups at a single point in time" (Institute for Work and Health, 2015).

Dependent Variable

The dependent variable for this study was Cyberbullying. The following are the items used in this survey:

• I have been Cyber-bullied before.
• I know of someone who has been Cyber-bullied.
• I got low self-esteem after being Cyber-bullied.
• I became suicidal after being Cyber-bullied.
• I shared my experience with someone else.
• I stopped using the internet.

The instrument had a 5-point scale ranging from Strongly disagree (1), disagree (2), Not sure (3), agree (4) and strongly agree (5).

Independent Variables

The independent variables in this study include self-esteem and suicidal thoughts. Self-esteem was operationalized as whether the individual had low or high self-esteem. Suicidal thoughts were operationalized as whether the individual had them or not.

Control Variables

These were considered to be age, gender, and race. Gender was operationalized as male (=1) and female (=0), race as white (=1) and Non-White (=0) and age as Adult (=1) and Non-Adult (=0).

Analysis

I carried out Statistical analysis using SPSS (Version 15). I initially conducted Descriptive analysis to get the overall relationship between cyberbullying and its effects. I later employed Ordinary Least-Squares regression on the data to estimate the relationship between the variables discussed above.

References

Institute for Work and Health, 2015. Cross-sectional vs. longitudinal studies. Retrieved on April 19, 2019 from https://www.iwh.on.ca/what-researchers-mean-by/cross-sectional-vs-longitudinal-studies.

Stephanie, 2015. Probability sampling: Definition types, advantages, and disadvantages. Retrieved on April 19, 2019, from https://www.statisticshowto.datasciencecentral.com/probability-sampling/.